Our Love/Hate Relationship With Wikipedia

netbuzz points us to a somewhat snarky Washington Post article about the Wikipedians' work in upholding a minimum standard of "notability" for the collaborative encyclopedia. Here's his take on the Post's bemusement from a NetworkWorld blog: "The Washington Post this morning gets its snickers at the Wikipedians who do the best they can to apply the minimum 'notability' standards needed to keep the online encyclopedia's 1.5 million English entries relatively free of worthless junk. 'It's also safe to assume these are people with a lot of time on their hands,' the Post writer notes... These are people doing a truly thankless job... and they deserve a few thank-yous."

Comments

It's not thankless

[i kan reed]

Most wikipedia editors you ever interact with are really quite nice. Wikipedia has a good sense of community. There's also a bit of personal satisfaction of knowing that you're slowly helping expand the ammount of freely available public knowledge, without the cruft.

Re:It's not thankless

[Original Replica]

"freely available public knowledge, without the cruft."- why would The Washington Post which makes it's money and reputation on charging for the distribution of knowledge, ever endorse that?

Re:It's not thankless

[EMeta]

The Post (and most newspapers) make a very small percentage of their revenue on subscription. Far more comes from advertisements; which is of course why most larger cities have free papers of some sort.

Re:It's not thankless

[osu-neko]

The Washington Post makes money by publishing interesting articles written by individual writers. Individual writers make money by writing on topics that interest readers, often by doing nothing more than sharing their opinions on things, albeit eloquently expressed opinions. The problem with the question your asking is that there's an implied idea behind it that "The Washington Post" has opinions and an agenda. Your question is unanswerable because it's asking for the opinions and motives of a thing, which has none, rather than asking about the opinions and motives of the various people in question (which almost certainly differ). There are numerous reasons why that particular writer might endorse that (personally held beliefs), why the editors might publish it (increase readership, satisfy the writer who writes other things they like more and they don't want to reject the few things they don't, look like they encourage diversity of opinion, etc), all of which would combine to cause the publication to contain opinions that are contrary to the best interests of the publication, because the publication itself puts no thought into this at all, everything happens on an individual level, with each person making decisions to benefit themselves, not the publication.

Re:It's not thankless

[Golias]

The real question here is:

Why is cruft a problem???

If somebody publishes a 15,000-word wiki on the 1970s NBC show "Cliffhangers", it's not like Wikipedia suddenly takes up more space on my bookshelf. Personally, I love that there's so much obscure crap on Wikipedia. Somebody on Fark mentioned some way-out there pop culture reference I never heard of, and Wiki has me up-to-speed in a matter of seconds. How can this possibly be a Bad Thing?

(Unless you are a journalist for a dying media with an axe to grind, that is...)

Re:It's not thankless

[fm6]

Without the cruft? Your definition of non-cruft would seem to be very broad.

"Nice" or not, most Wikipedia editors I worked with had very set notions about the "right" way to do things. Even if you have the official guidelines on your side, it's very hard to get anybody to change their minds. When I participated in the "request for deletion" discussions (I think they're called something else now) people mostly had their notions of what was notable and what wasn't, and that was that. Sometimes they'd even refuse to explain their opinions.

It really doesn't matter whether the discussion are polite or not, because they never go anywhere. It's a myth that Wikipedia is edited by consensus. Content is controlled by those who outstubborn everybody else.

Re:It's not thankless

[StikyPad]

They do charge, yes, but the charge is mainly to the advertisers -- much like online. What you pay for a newspaper subscription only covers the distribution infrastructure. You likely pay for distribution of your online news as well, unless you have free internet access. The benefit of the latter is obviously that you get as much information as you like from as many sources as you like. The benefit of the former is that it's conveniently portable and the signal to noise ratio is usually a bit better.

Re:It's not thankless

[Original Replica]

The Washington Post is a business. Part of big business is to down-play the publicly perceived value of your competition, the editors and writers both know this. They also know that Wiki doesn't mail you a check for expressing your eloquent opinions. While it would be nice if mass media was based on giving unbiased information to a well informed public, that ideal has been quite eroded in the last 25 years. Read all about it. http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/032000a.html

Re:It's not thankless

[TheRaven64]

I couldn't agree more. Wikipedia went down in my estimation when they started aggressively pruning. A couple of articles I regularly used for reference suddenly vanished because the topics weren't 'notable.' Oh, and once they were deleted, non-admins then couldn't even read the old version. In my opinion, if a single user (other than the author) finds a Wikipedia entry useful then it has value and shouldn't be deleted.

One of the biggest advantages that Wikipedia has is that it can have a much larger scope than any print publication ever could, and it seems silly to squander this.

Re:It's not thankless

[rgmoore]

Why is cruft a problem???

Because there are still limits on the system. If you let each person, group, and event in the world have a page on Wikipedia, you'll have serious problems telling them all apart. As an example, there are 38 people on Wikipedia named John Smith, and more with some variant on the name, like Johnny or Jon. And that's after trying to eliminate nobodies. If they let anyone with that name have a page, it would be a nightmare to tell them all apart.

Then there's the problem of how to get an accurate entry on an unimportant topic. Wikipedia depends on collaborative editing to ensure factual accuracy, but that depends on having plenty of contributors. The fewer people there are contributing to a page, the more likely it is to have unrecognized factual or interpretive errors. A page with only one contributor can say literally anything about its subject, which is exactly how a number of serious errors have gotten into Wikipedia. A noteworthiness requirement is a reasonable way of guarding against that problem.

Re:It's not thankless

[TheRaven64]

Why is parent moderated as funny? This pretty much sums up how Wikipedia works, in my experience. One article I saw was marked for deletion. The discussion eventually came to the conclusion it shouldn't be deleted. A fortnight later, it was marked for speedy deletion, no new points were raised, and it was deleted. I still have no real idea why, and once the page is deleted non-admins can't even get at the discussion.

Re:It's not thankless

[harmonica]

Personally, I love that there's so much obscure crap on Wikipedia.

My opinion exactly!

However, disappointments come when an important (yeah, whatever that means) topic is dealt with in a sub-par article. Happens rarely, but it does happen. Some argue that time should be spent on improving the "less obscure" articles instead of putting up lengthy Star Wars character descriptions. But that's just a misunderstanding of how Wikipedia works. The people spending all that time on obscure Star Wars topics couldn't produce a decent article on Wittgenstein or sauce béarnaise. However, the philosophers and chefs who can aren't well-versed in that galaxy far, far away. And if I do want to learn about Han Solo's early years, I know that Britannica will turn its back on me and where to look instead. So everyone should describe the things they know really well and everyone will gain from that. (Mostly weight, in the case of the sauce, but hey, there's always Dieting - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)

Re:It's not thankless

[budgenator]

People of Earth;
After years of research, we have decided to expand your planets entry from "Harmless" to "Mostly Harmless".
  Have a good day!
The Editor, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe

Re:It's not thankless

[Kingrames]

Where can I nominate "Outstubborn" for the "new word of the year" award?

Re:It's not thankless

[Hittite Creosote]

It depends on where the cruft is.

If the cruft is in separate articles, then the problem is just the sheer number of articles to be watched -quiet articles on obscure subjects are more likely to not be watched by anyone, so are more likely to be defaced without anyone noticing. This is particularly a problem where biographies are concerned.

If the cruft is in a main article, then it can become more of a problem. If you want to look at the events of 1962, you probably only want to see the main news events of that year, rather than a list of 10,000+ names that includes every professional sportsperson, musician, high level professor, published author, elected politician, actor, wrestler, porn star and z-list celebrity born in that year.

Re:It's not thankless

[prator]

Agreed. Even some enjoyable articles like Everywhere Girl and now Slashdot Subculture are deleted.

Re:It's not thankless

[h2g2bob]

Where can I nominate "Outstubborn" for the "new word of the year" award?

How about wikipedia?

Re:It's not thankless

[mdwh2]

I agree to some degree - I don't like it when people criticise Wikipedia because there are loads of articles on some TV show they don't care about.

However, in my experience articles deleted for lack of notability have related problems such as being impossible to verify, or they suggest the subject is more important or well known than they actually are.

Cliffhangers does in fact have an article (although not quite that long). The problems are more when some random person decides they should have an article on themselves, or articles for a word they just made up, and so on. It's not obscure stuff that's the problem - it's stuff which is totally unimportant.

Re:It's not thankless

[soliptic]

You're talking two things here, depth and breadth.

If somebody publishes a 15,000-word wiki on the 1970s NBC show "Cliffhangers" - Depth
some way-out there pop culture reference I never heard of, and Wiki has me up-to-speed - Breadth

My personal view is that Wikipedia shouldn't be shy of breadth. One of the things I think it has going for it (versus traditional encyclopaedias and "knowledge stores") is that it can document that trivial, the everyday and the disposable, which would not be deemed worthy enough to be worth the paper-space in Britannica or book-length analyses by academics, but may still be very interesting to future generations.

On the other hand, when it comes to depth, I think pruning is probably for the best. A 15,000 word dissertation on a niche topic doesn't really deserve to be in Wikipedia - it deserves to be published in full elsewhere, and summarised / referenced / linked as appropriate to an encyclopaedia article.

Re:It's not thankless

[Scorchmon]

Absolutely. I participated in one of these discussions as well, and none of the established Wikipedia editors would consider the discussion for why to keep the article. They simply throw out that the article is not notable, and when you reply with links and quotes from Wikipedia rules explaining what makes something notable, they flat out ignore you. What's even funnier is when people join the discussion who aren't established editors and the editors/admins start throwing around terms like "sock puppet" and "meat puppet" to make your contributions to the discussion dismissible. They even go so far as to go back and change their opinion from "keep" to "delete" if they decide they don't like the people arguing for the side of keeping the article.

Wikipedia policy itself is a joke. They have rules and policies set forth to suit most editors' purposes, but when their agenda doesn't sit nicely with established policy, they pull this card out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:IAR

Re:It's not thankless

[Firehed]

That's why I like Wikipedia. As a nonprofit, it doesn't have the need to downplay competition, and thus can present more non-biased information.

Of course, what happens in theory and in practice may be two different things, especially with a user-editable project such as Wikipedia. Political articles in particular tend to get biased easily (thanks in no small part to PR departments, I'm sure), but Wikipedia has no reason to downplay would-be competition.

Re:It's not thankless

[lordSaurontheGreat]

I love that there is so much stuff on Wikipedia. The encyclopedia at the library doesn't have hardly any of the things that people will need these days. Case study: I got called "leet." I had no idea what it meant, and the person wasn't doing a terribly bang-up job of explaining it. I wasn't sure whether to sue him for libel or to be deeply complimented. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found out. Marvelous.

Wikipedia also has many valuable tidbits of information. Example: They have a wonderful article on Binary Trees, and more wonderful articles on how the Internet works, how the IP system came to be and how it works, and all kinds of stuff. You just don't find that stuff in the same level of detail in the Encyclopedia Americana. It's a wonderful public resource in that it opens up more information, more up-to-date information, and so much much more of it to *everyone.* You don't have to be able to get to a library if you just have a internet connection and a computer.

If Wikipedia ever went down, it would be like Google going down. The web would become almost unusable, and likewise the web would loose a terribly important resource in Wikipedia. Wikipedia also is so accurate that many other online encyclopedic services use Wiki articles as theirs or they use them as a base to build their own articles. I saw the same Wikipedia article on King Leopold the Third of Belgium mirrored on about nine different sites (only about three of which admitted that it was a Wikipedia article, curiously enough).

Re:It's not thankless

[ethicalBob]

Cruft about obscure topical subjects is part of the Wiki lifeblood; I think in this case they are speaking of the really inane b.s. that some people try to put up;

Odes to their dead hampster

• An "article" about their 2-bit web development company

• Advertorials in general (although some of the music articles come pretty close to the line)

• Notable" people who are primarily only notable to their family...

• Instructions on how to really make your MySpace page look really rad and different from everyone elses using CSS.

• etc. etc. etc.

cheers!

Re:It's not thankless

[McFadden]

Why is cruft a problem???

It's not. That's why there is already a Wikipedia with all the cruft you want. It's called The Google.

Re:It's not thankless

[Gregory Rider]

There is now an "appreciation site" devoted to the collection of cruft deleted from Wikipedia known as the WikiDumper at wikidumper.blogspot.org. The site is beginning to draw attention, too, receiving press from the likes of USA Today, Fortune, Der Spiegel, Boing Boing, and CNET. It isn't surprising that much of the material which is considered for deletion on Wikipedia turns out to be a hoax, but what is surprising is that some of these hoaxes manage to surving 2-3 years before being noticed.

Re:It's not thankless

[poopdeville]

Check out the Encyclopedia Dramatica entry on the Wikipedia. It's very fair and balanced. In fact, it has been deleted and locked. In fact, its Talk page has been deleted and locked as well.

I agree with your point in principle, but admins with axes to grind make it less than true.

Re:It's not thankless

[deceased comrade]

The Internet isn't nearly as easy to edit at the wikipedia. There is to my knowledge no way for a person to make a web page easily, free, and anonymously. The wikipedia does give you the option to make a page on anything easily. This is of course mostly an issue for the less technologically inclined, but those are the people who could be contributing more to the internet with their useful internet unrelated knowledge.

Re:It's not thankless

[strikethree]

If people are reading the articles (which they must be if they are arguing against its deletion), then why bother deleting it? It is useful to someone and that should be all that really matters. What is an extra 15k in space when someone is actually finding the article useful?

Ah well, I guess I am just validating your arguments.

strike

Re:It's not thankless

[migurski]

As a nonprofit, it doesn't have the need to downplay competition, and thus can present more non-biased information.

I agree that WIkipedia has less of an incentive to present biased information, but I don't think it's because non-profits have no need to downplay competition. WP requires money and attention to work, and competes for these limited resources against other projects. They just happen to be at the top of the heap, so *not mentioning* the competition promotes the perception that they're in a class of their own.

Re:It's not thankless

[SamSim]

I agree with everybody's points - ordinarily, there is no reason to strip "non-notable" articles and information and "cruft" from the encyclopedia. But there are some other points to consider. For one thing, Wikipedia is supported by user donations and has no advertisements. All that hosting money has to come out of somebody's pocket. If the powers that be have a choice between paying to host large amounts of information on topics of very limited appeal/use, and saving money on bandwidth and storage by removing that information, then they have every right to select the second option, particularly if it means Wikipedia as a whole can remain more financially secure.

Information is NOT free-as-in-beer.

Re:It's not thankless

[Ed Avis]

There's no shortage of disk space, but there is a shortage of editors and human effort needed to moderate and sort out all these articles. That's one reason to try to keep un-notable content out of Wikipedia.

Re:It's not thankless

[WWWWolf]

Oo, this presents good opportunities.

One thing I hate about these kind of comments is that they never tell what article this thing was about. "There was this article, you know?" ... I hate that. Usually, when people talk this way in any debate, I get the distinct feeling that I'm not getting the whole picture. Usually also with the names told, too.

So could you tell me the name of the article? If it was indeed unjustly deleted, I will restore it. If it was speedy deleted, I can assess the history and tell exactly what went wrong and why.

(And also, remember that deleted articles, unless they're protected, can be recreated by anybody. Speedy deletion requests can be contested if you're quick enough to provide a plausible explanation. You can contact the deleting admin and explain yourself and ask them to explain themselves. You're also free to bring the issue up at Administrator's noticeboard/Incidents or Deletion review.)

Re:It's not thankless

[TheRaven64]

One example is the Swansea University Computer Society page. It was about the most complete reference regarding the society's achievements I know of, and I used to point prospective computer science students at it, since a question often asked at open days is 'Why have I seen Swansea in the credits when I boot up Linux?'

Is the society notable? Well, maybe not. It's the largest university computer society in the UK, is (or possibly was) the only one that maintained its own 24-hour computer lab, and it was where much of the TCP/IP code for Linux was developed, but that doesn't necessarily make it notable. I have no idea what notable means in the Wikipedia context, and I don't really care.

Was the page useful? Yes, obviously, since I used it, and showed it to other people. Personally, I would regard useful as a better criteria than notable when deciding to keep an article.

As I have said before, I strongly disagree with the way Wikipedia handles deletions. I feel that the page should just be updated saying 'This page has been deleted because of x,' and the history made available to everyone (with the exception of pages deleted because they host illegal content). A count of the number of unique readers that visit the history page should be kept, and if it reaches a certain (low) threshold, it should be re-instated.

Anyway, read through the history. I'd be interested to hear your opinions, here or off-board.

Re:It's not thankless

[tommertron]

I agree too. I had to start a small campaign just to get Diggnation back in Wikipedia. For long time, it was just redirecting to the Revision3 entry which a lot of people would find confusing. I say open the gates - everything should be created.

Re:It's not thankless

[orangesquid]

Warning: previewing my own comment, it looks rather rant-ish. I swear there's some worthwhile information contained herein, though!

Actually, I hung out in #wikipedia on freenode when a write-up someone did for a band I used to be in simply disappeared and found out that things are getting deleted just because they don't want to look like they're full of cruft and un-encyclopedia-worthy content. I asked specifically if it was a lack of computer resources, or lack of editors to manage all the content, or if it was a lack of other good ways to deal with misinformation (the talk pages, new categories like "articles with unsourced statements", article locking, etc., seemed like good enough ways to manage misinformation to me, but maybe I was simply naive?)---but, I was told none of these were the reason!! (I would have logged the conversation and saved it, but you aren't allowed to log #wikipedia, because evidently someone that a bunch of wiki-editors didn't like very much kept posting logs of the chatroom, and they felt it was inappropriate for their public conversations to, erm, stay public?? or something.)

Also, as to the idea that "Well, there are lots of things with similar names!" -- yes, the reason behind disambiguation pages. If the canadian band named Fear Zero (incidentally, if you're curious, they showed up on the internet about 2004. fear *OF* zero showed up around 2000, and the name was then-unique, and we had picked it partly because we couldn't find anyone with a similar name.) ever got written up on wikipedia, and someone wanted the "Fear of Zero" entry to be a disambiguation page (although, AFAIK we always used the "of", and the canadian group has never used an "of", so I don't think the question would arise to begin with), then, hey, that'd work just fine.

When I went into #wikipedia to ask for info/help, a lot of people laughed and asked why some random garage band had gotten written up in the first place. Numerous chatters (some of which I discovered were editors and admins) jumped to the conclusion that I had written up an autobiography or autobandbiography or something, and said promotional material doesn't belong. (I have to retort: for a band that is no longer around, I wouldn't call it promo material; second, I *didn't* write it up! Someone else did! Christ...)

There actually wasn't anything in the main wikipedia deletion discussion logs... you can get "speedily-deleted" (which means no real record available* to prove some content was ever there), particularly if there's a write-up of somebody or something or somerandomband that doesn't explain its own notability (should every wikipedia article now include a section entitled "Why this thing is meaningful and shouldn't be deleted"?)

The only way I could ever tell the article had existed was that some editor told me I could construct a URL of the form "/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=PAGENA ME" and figure out if there was a record for deletion. (( '*' = )) The only record of the content was "A7" -- which means "The biography or write-up didn't provide a thorough description of the subject's notability" or something like that.

There have been so many speedily deletions that the 404 page for articles now includes an automatic link to this Special:Log/delete page for a given article... I guess a lot of people have been wondering where articles have been going. And, you don't even have to be "marked for speedy deletion", as the Post article states---you can just have a random editor click "Delete" and a write-up will disappear.

Non-admins can't access any speedily deleted content, unless they can beg an admin to restore the page---since I had always liked the write-up about [Fear of .Z.E.R.O.] once it had showed up, someone Userfyed it for me, meaning the revision history was added to my [User:Os] page as [User:Os/Fear_of_.Z.E.R.O.].

Does anyone else want to see another wiki-like site open up (something more akin to Everything2?) whose goal is pretty much to summarize and index all human knowledge, rather than just compete with Encyclopedia Britannica?

Re:It's not thankless

[Raenex]

If Wikipedia ever went down, it would be like Google going down.

No way. The internet was and still is chock full of information that separate people and organizations maintain. I often use wiki as a first source (usually by attaching "wiki" to my Google search), but there are always alternative sources.

From your examples: Want to find the meaning of leet? Google keywords: glossary leet. Similar results for all the other topics you name.

Don't get me wrong, Wikipedia is useful resource, but saying stuff like "the web would become almost unusable" is huge overstatement.

Re:It's not thankless

[xiong.chiamiov]

Because it's a non-profit organization trying to pay for itself. Granted, servers are cheap, but they still cost money.

Re:It's not thankless

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia has to be the most widely misunderstood project on the web. A quick read of their policies would correct 99% of misconceptions about it.

Let's try some of these:

"Wikipedia isn't a physical book and therefore can be infinitely large. Why can't they have an article about everything?"

If you have any insight and have ever been involved with any voluntary project, particularly running one, you will soon realise that volunteer time isn't free.

That's so important (and not just on Wikipedia or web/software projects) that I'll repeat it: volunteer time isn't free.

There is a finite amount of volunteer time available to any project and it's usually extremely limited. If you choose to spend it doing any one thing (eg. editing/gardening/managing large numbers of articles on non-notable topics) then you must, of necessity, forgo spending it on something else that the people running this particular project have decided is more important. That is, maintaining good quality (and not getting sued) on a relatively small number of articles about topics they consider to be "notable".

"But it doesn't take up _anyone else's time_ if I choose to write a 1000 word article about my local pub band and I don't intend to volunteer for the project otherwise, so they're not losing anything."

Other people will still have to manage that article and that will take their time, which is very limited.

"This notability business is stupid. If it's of interest to someone, it's notable and should be included."

The ultimate answer to this is that Wikipedia is someone else's baby, they've decided what they consider to be "notable" and to a large degree this judgement has evolved through custom and use. Therefore, if you don't like it, you are free (in both senses of the word) to start your own Omniwiki - using Wikipedia's open-source software and GFDL-licensed content, if you like.

As far as I know, no-one has yet done this. The reason for this seems to be that none of the armchair critics are in a position to manage a project at least an order of magnitude bigger than Wikipedia itself. That's fair enough, as such a thing would be an enormous undertaking.

If you want to manage such a project, keep the servers running, source the necessary funding and sign up to being the person who receives the lawsuits, by all means step up to the plate. Wikipedia hasn't ruined your life. It's provided something useful but necessarily limited, as all things are. Furthermore, it's provided you the tools to build on their work. You really can't say fairer than that.

"All this deciding about what to accept and reject is elitist and "non-web"/20th century/boring."

This is going to come as a shock to some people in these relativist times, but there are still many fair-minded and educated people in the world that consider some things to be better than others. Many people would consider presidents and prime ministers more notable than elected members of community education boards and waste disposal committees. Newton probably matters more to his subject than your old physics teacher. Shakespeare made a greater contribution to literature than an insurance salesman that self-publishes his romantic novels on lulu.com. It's just a matter of where you draw the line. Given that there are real limitations on managerial, editors', administrators' and technicians' time and funding, the line has to be drawn somewhere.

"But their notability criteria are arbitrary!"

Yes, and if they used _your_ notability criteria, they'd still be arbitrary.

As you grow older, you will find that when lines have to be drawn they often are put somewhere arbitrary. You can argue where exactly that should be but in this kind of case it's hard to argue against the arbitrariness principle. If you want to take up the debate in real world terms, then I think you have to address it in terms of volunteer time, funding and all the rest.

The idea that Wikipedia is "non-web thinking" is bizarre, b

Re:It's not thankless

[ArizonaBay]

I disagree. And here's a perfect example why.

There exists a Japanese anime cartoon known as Gundam.

There exists a small group of Wikipedia editors that, to put it mildly, are fans of this cartoon.

There exists thousands of articles dealing with a freaking cartoon about some fucking robots. These articles include such encyclopedic knowledge such as:

The armament, weight and first deployment (in the Cosmic Era timeline, of course)of the GAT-X105 Strike Gundam mobility suit.

Intricate schematics, "production" information, specifications of the Musai-Class Light Cruiser.

And this sort of shit exists for pretty much every damn thing the animators of this cartoon have ever even thought of drawing. Down with the anime crazies. I'd love to see the flamewar that would errupt on the Articles for Deletion page of Wikipedia if their precious spaceships and robots were nominated.

Re:It's not thankless

[Anonymous Coward]

There is to my knowledge no way for a person to make a web page easily, free, and anonymously. The wikipedia does give you the option to make a page on anything easily

Make your own damn toy wiki about yourself or whatever: http://scratchpad.wikia.com/

Re:It's not thankless

[PurifyYourMind]

Wouldn't obscure articles get less traffic, by definition?

Re:It's not thankless

[lordSaurontheGreat]

While I'm sure there are many other resources out there, I'm referring to the fact that Wikipedia in unique in that it is the single most centralized free resource of information. I remember to the days before Wikipedia, when the world was full of Yahoo! searches (Google was in its infancy) and how the net was composed of a few sparse resources which weren't very good. That was 1996-1999. Then Google came onto my radar and that made things easier. Then Wikipedia came and the net became a very usable thing. While the net would still be technically "usable" in the absence of Wikipedia, Wikipedia has created a expectation that would be sorely, sorely missed. The analogy is fairly accurate if you start to postulate the ramifications of depreciating the role of Wikipedia in your life. Try boycotting it for a week (a week in which you would have needed it) and see how you fare.

Re:It's not thankless

[fm6]

If people are reading the articles (which they must be if they are arguing against its deletion), then why bother deleting it?

Good question. If I still suffered from the illusion that the Wikipedia model had any chance of working, the first thing I'd do to "fix" it is just get rid of the idea of notability. Everything is "notable" to somebody, so what gets rated as notable on Wikipedia is whatever happens to be of interest to whoever's participating at the moment.

Space is not an issue. There's another policy that says, "Wikipedia is not paper" — that is, conserving space is never a priority. So really, why bother?

Re:It's not thankless

[WWWWolf]

I looked a bit at the history - not that much yet, mind you - and it seems to me that the primary reason was that it appeared to be not that notable for a topic of its own. The deletion debate closure is pretty long-winded but it draws interesting conclusions.

I guess it's not the end yet, however.

One of Wikipedia's confusing bits is that if people think this article is fit for deletion, then it can and should stay entirely dead. This is not true.

This is yet again a good example of a topic that could, first and foremost, covered to sufficient detail at a main article, with only a redirect pointing at the actual article. I'm a big fan of brevity, actually; it's better to stick at essential details. (Do we need to know the workstations run Redhat? Does anyone care?) It's a funny thing: People see the Sonic the Hedgehog article and believe they can write as much stuff about their little but influential club. Umm... it's not always that way. You can't always think of a whole lot of interesting facts about some things. You can't always say "yes, I believe this topic can be expanded into a really big and interesting article".

So apologies if I'm not immediately thinking there's a great big misjustice that's been happened here; however, I agree the information could find a place in Wikipedia. It's a club that sounds notable within the university.

I'd first go expanding the university article, then, if the student club sections go too big, split them to articles of their own, and only then grudgingly create an article about the individual organisations.

My recommendation in this case would be to recreate the article as a redirect and add a short bit of it to the article about the university. I guess the club is interesting enough to be mentioned, in breadth of at least of a paragraph... (Heck, I can't think of more than a few short paragraphs of interesting stuff to say about our student union, and I guess-believe it was one of our guys who invented IRC, for crying out loud...) If there's sufficent need to restore the history, you can always bring that up at Deletion review.

Yes, we sometimes end up chopping things. Yes, we sometimes end up rewriting the whole thing from ground up and only sparing a few bits (just look at what the heck I recently had to do with this article, it wasn't pretty I tell you). But such is sometimes the nature of writing good stuff.

And yes, the deletion system is a bit schemy and annoying right now for ordinary users. The UI isn't best imaginable either. It's currently possible to show why the article was deleted (view logs for the page), but people don't know how to do that. (Hmm, got to add this to my great big list of MediaWiki UI design flaws.) The "legal reasons" thing is implemented but is a bit nasty because it's a new feature: formerly, ordinary admins were tasked to remove personal information, but the new really-super-secret deletion rights to sweep revisions further under the carpet is a rare privilege and not handed out at will. There's probably tons of "ordinarily deleted" revisions containing personal information and like. We probably would need more oversight-access people before we could let people look freely at deleted revisions again... However, always remember you can ask admins for copies of deleted articles that don't have such content; In this article's case, restoring the history might not be a big problem.

Re:It's not thankless

[McFadden]

The Internet isn't nearly as easy to edit as the wikipedia.

That's weird. I'd always thought that Wikipedia was part of the err... Internet!

Re:It's not thankless

[aminorex]

Well, they won't get my contributions any more. Not since they stopped being useful and turned from a community of contributors into a warring nest of political factions.

Re:It's not thankless

[deceased comrade]

I mean that editing the wikipedia is much easier than creating a webpage, finding hosting, managing the hosting, paying for bandwidth, and getting the page found among the billions of other pages. Wikis provide an incredibly simple way to add your knowledge to the internet.

Re:It's not thankless

[Golias]

Relying on external links too heavily for depth would kill Wikipedia's usefulness, because the massive rate of churn on the Internet would pretty much make wiki pages nearly impossible to maintain. In a matter of months, half the reference links would be broken. 15,000 words, while seemingly excessive, takes up very little storage space (in modern terms) and a lot fewer headaches than linking to some external dissertation.

Repeating the same mistake

[dgg3565]

Didn't the MSM take something of a similar attitude toward blogs once they first emerged as a real force? And Wikipedia has been gaining "critical mass" in the same way blogs did a two or three years past. Setting all that aside, the tone of the article is somewhat unprofessional if your evaluating a new idea.

Re:Repeating the same mistake

[infaustus]

The article is from the Style section, which is more for entertainment than for information.

The language nazi says:

[s20451]

Here's his take on the Post's bemusement from a NetworkWorld blog:

"Bemuse" is a synonym for "confuse". It is not a synonym for "amuse".

Yes, yes ... evolving language, etc.

Re:The language nazi says:

[john_sheu]

From Merriam-Webster's:

bemuse
1 : to make confused : PUZZLE, BEWILDER
2 : to occupy the attention of : DISTRACT, ABSORB
3 : to cause to have feelings of wry or tolerant amusement

Re:The language nazi says:

[RAMMS EIN]

Cmuse me?

Re:The language nazi says:

[Watson Ladd]

amuse="a" meaning without+"muse" meaning thought.
confusion=Lack of good thinking.
They seem pretty close to me.

Re:The language nazi says:

[potat0man]

oooh p0wned!

Re:The language nazi says:

[abaddononion]

Grandparent poster isnt *entirely* wrong. Parent is right, of course, due to the evolving language. However, bemuse did used to mean something akin to (paraphrasing): "to amuse in a borderline annoying fashion". In fact, even in the parent's post, you can get that from definition 3 still. So... bemusement is *really* supposed to mean reluctant amusement. I hate it, but I have to admit... it amuses me. Maybe like clowns for some people.

Of course, the evolution of language ruins complicated words like these, so I have to say to parent that pulling out the latest dictionary defintions of a word doesnt necessarily make me feel any better about what that word is SUPPOSED to mean. For example, have we reached the point yet where the word "irony" is just defined as a synonymn for "coincidental"? I see it coming.

For anyone further interested in the madness that is the english language, you should check this out: http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill-Bryson/dp /0380715430.

Shit Casserole

[Brandybuck]

These are people doing a truly thankless job... and they deserve a few thank-yous

Like a shit casserole, the thanklessness of the job is irrelevant. The good intentions of a chef cannot overcome the poor choice of ingredients. In the case of Wikipedia, the poor choice was in an anarchic methodology that assumes a consensus of anonymity can product accuracy.

Re:Shit Casserole

[0123456]

"an anarchic methodology that assumes a consensus of anonymity can product accuracy"

I find it hardly surprising that the people who complain most about Wikipedia know so little about it.

Re:Shit Casserole

[Anonymous Coward]

an anarchic methodology that assumes a consensus of anonymity can product accuracy.

That's hardly an inaccurate assumption. For example if myself and other AC's came to a consensus that you are a asshole, I'm sure that would be accurate.

Re:Shit Casserole

[arivanov]

Funnily enough, it can on non-contentious subjects where there is a general consensus. For example if we look at the T-34, the Halifax bomber and a few other I have looked up lately, the quality of the articles and their objectiveness is quite impressive (I am familiar with the subject matter enough to catch mistakes in these).

The anarchical approach fails the moment it gets into a contentious subject or when facing with a well organised system hell bent on putting their side of the story through. Articles on some of the more corrupt US congresscritters are a good example of this. Creationism, Life/Choice and a few others are also in this category.

A mixture of anarchy and order for the contentious ones is possibly the best solution.

Re:Shit Casserole

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this is needed exactly the reason why Wikipedia has been completely unsuccessful. I mean, hardly anybody's even HEARD of it!

Re:Shit Casserole

[Planesdragon]

Sheesh.

1: The measure of a chef is how good he can make ANY ingredients. If Emeril couldn't turn stale bread and barely-edible beef into a good meal, he wouldn't have a show.

2: Regarding your sig, the American left stands for liberty, community, and equality. It only seems like they're only negative because the Right doesn't give them any credit for their good ideas, so after the third or fourth co-opted idea they stopped offering any new ones until the next administration change.

Re:Shit Casserole

[Anonymous Coward]

Emeril turns good beef into a stale show.

Re:Shit Casserole

[Anonymous Coward]

2: Regarding your sig, the American left stands for liberty, community, and equality. I'm all for the first one, but those second two are trouble -- a stones-throw away from "Community. Identity. Stability."

The insight necessary is to recognize that liberty precludes the use of violence (including government) as a means to producing those ends of "community" and "equality".

Why?

[Jott42]

I do not see the need for the stringent notability criterion on Wikipedia: it is not as that the book will be to thick and expensive to sell if every article would be allowed to stay. (Bandwidth-costs must outweigh the cost for harddisks as it is mainly text.) What would be the harm of being a repisotory of every article that somebody had the energy to write? Still keeping the wiki methid: anybody can correct any article at any time. (I do not see the reason for necessarily keeping the articles short, either. A long article is better than a short one, just make sure that there is a good summary in the beginning. This would also allow for giving opposing theories some space.)

Re:Why?

[Reality Master 101]

What would be the harm of being a repisotory of every article that somebody had the energy to write?

Because we already have the web at large for that. The point of an Encyclopedia is not be the repository of all knowledge, but to be a summary of all notable subjects. The "repository of all knowledge" IS all published knowledge.

Re:Why?

[usermilk]

Amen to that. It makes no sense to delete a stub or "unnoatable person" on Wikipedia. The only real justification would be so that people feel special when they are included in Wikipedia and that is conceited.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that as I see it now the whole thing is a cluster fuck in terms of notability, if you either get an admin or enough people to agree with you it's notable (or not notable) no matter what it is. I personally laugh at the webcomic entries as by wikipedia's OWN standards 99% of them shouldn't be there. Its hilarious because they're now a self consistent set of notability, no single article (not counting the truly shitty ones) can be deleted (they are, people bitch and they're back inside of a week) because then it's hypocritical given all the other webcomic articles still being there.

Re:Why?

[Rakishi]

Because most of them will be unverifiable and probably down right wrong. IF there are no outside sources for verification and only 1000 people in the world who know anything of the article's subject then you have a single person writing the article probably. Not to mention that the larger the wikipedia the more energy is needed just to maintain some sort of coherence in the articles and remove obviously wrong crap (which means other articles will suffer as this is a finite resource).

I'd prefer a limited wikipedia with good articles to one with everything where half the stuff is utter shit.

Re:Why?

[ronanbear]

It's better just to delete the spam references to such non notable people in otherwise informative articles.

That is a much more serious problem because it undermines good articles if they become filled up with references and sections about unimportant events, people and places.

Re:Why?

[Reality Master 101]

Except that as I see it now the whole thing is a cluster fuck in terms of notability

Wait, something created by humans is not perfect? GOOD LORD!

I personally laugh at the webcomic entries as by wikipedia's OWN standards 99% of them shouldn't be there.

The question is notability. If they have sufficient readership (or links, based on Googling, for example), then they probably belong there.

If your web comic isn't getting enough people thinking it's notable and campaigning for it, then yes, it probably isn't. Sorry about that. Keep working on it...

Re:Why?

[ShieldW0lf]

What would be the harm of being a repisotory of every article that somebody had the energy to write?

Because we already have the web at large for that. The point of an Encyclopedia is not be the repository of all knowledge, but to be a summary of all notable subjects. The "repository of all knowledge" IS all published knowledge.

Back when we didn't have an Internet and people actually turned routinely to books and encyclopedias for information, the point of an encyclopedia was its breadth and accuracy. You couldn't afford to keep an entire library in your house, but you could have an encyclopedia, and you would hope that your search could end there ideally. If it didn't, you had to go digging.

You had to deal with the limitations of the medium, so you don't just want to fill it with every bit of trivia in the world and still have breadth, but the foremost criteria was that it was accurate, that you could look it up and go forth with the assurance that you might not have exhaustive information about the subject, but what you did know was solid.

Bound by those limitations, there were pocket encyclopedias you could carry, still as fat as was practical, and there were large hardcover encyclopedias you could keep at your desk, and there were affordable sets of 8 books for your home, and there were nicer sets of 24 books for the library, or if you had more cash or got on a payment plan, and there were sets of books that tried to increase their breadth even more by focusing on one subject or another allowing for more depth, and there were a multitude of those about sports and music and what have you.

The encyclopedia was supposed to be accurate and hold as much broad knowledge as it was possible for the books to hold.

The significant difference between an encyclopedia of any sort and the web at large is most definately not supposed to be that the encyclopedia only has the "notable" stuff in it. It's supposed to be that you know the encyclopedia is factual.

If they were to focus on a method of a) achieving as much breadth as possible while b) never sacrificing their accuracy in the name of breadth, they might be a different beast, and I might not think they suck. But they neither claim nor appear to focus on these things, and I personally agree with the Post article.

Wikipedia might be a novel human achievement, it might be the best they could do, but at the end of the day, it's a boat that almost floats; not good enough to be put to practical use.

Re:Why?

[ubernostrum]

The point of an Encyclopedia is not be the repository of all knowledge, but to be a summary of all notable subjects.

And yet... notability as a criterion for inclusion is not and never has been an official policy of Wikipedia. It is, at most a disputed guideline, and the Wikimedia Foundation's own fundraising materials include the statement, "Imagine a world in which every person has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing." Not "the sum of all notable human knowledge" or "the sum of the human knowledge we think is worthwhile", but the sum of all human knowledge.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is BS, it's used to routinely delete pages in some cases without any voting (admin deletes a page, links to this criteria and tells everyone to STFU). So it's only a disputed guideline in the sense of "some people don't like it, we may tweak it a bit" not in the sense of "it's not used all the damn time."

Re:Why?

[macshit]

Wikipedia might be a novel human achievement, it might be the best they could do, but at the end of the day, it's a boat that almost floats; not good enough to be put to practical use.

Speak for yourself.

Wikipedia obviously is far from perfect, but it's certainly good enough for "practical use" in many subjects. I normally use it to look up mathematics-related articles, and while wikipedia's math-related articles tend to be a bit less elegantly written than more specialized sites (e.g. wolfram's mathworld), they are often more useful. I typically check multiple sites to get different perspectives but it's usually wikipedia that strikes the best balance of breadth/depth/accessibility (for instance, wikipeda tends to do a much better job of presenting a subject from the point of view of multiple fields, and giving practical examples and algorithms to illustrate them).

[My biggest complaint about wikipedia is not accuracy but rather that articles sometimes have a sort of clumsy "scattershot" tone that I suppose is the result of having multiple editors edit over time -- however this is also what gives the articles their welcome breadth. Ideally it would be nice if each article had a single editor concentrating just on language and structure, smoothing over the effects of multiple "content" editors.]

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

One reason that fewer articles, on more sought-after topics, can be better is this: Fewer pointless, unrelated search results obscuring what 99% of the audience is looking for.

But that isn't a problem on wikipedia! I hear you cry.

Correct! That means the system is working.

Re:Why?

[femto]

I strongly disagree. I see a role for Wikipedia as the repository of all public knowledge under a Free license. The web may be a huge repository, but hardly any of it is Free.

The rise of the Wikipedia administrator will be the death of Wikipedia as we know it. One the administrators get under enough people's skin there will be a revolt by non-administrator Wikipedians against their overlords, resulting in either a forking of Wikipedia or the abolition of administrator status.

Re:Why?

[ubernostrum]

Well, that's what makes it interesting; non-notability is one of the most often-cited justifications for deleting an article, but it's never actually been an official policy to delete non-notable topics. The entire culture of exclusion at Wikipedia basically grew up around something that isn't a Wikipedia policy.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they have sufficient readership (or links, based on Googling, for example), then they probably belong there.

None of that officially maters, go read the web resource notability criteria. If it's not referenced by some credible source it does not belong on wikipedia according to them. One site I know got it's article deleted by an admin despite an Alexa rating of 19k.

If your web comic isn't getting enough people thinking it's notable and campaigning for it, then yes, it probably isn't. Sorry about that. Keep working on it...

Have you even read what I wrote or are you such an idiot as to be incapable of any reading comprehension. My point was that not ENOUGH webcomic articles are being deleted according to their own criteria. 99% of the webcomic articles only belong there is you use a criteria so loose it's hilarious, one that was specifically made for webcomics by the webcomic community as under any other criteria 99% of the articles should be gone.

Either there is a consistent or at least agreed upon notability criteria or the whole thing is worthless.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which makes it not different from any official wikipedia policy. They know about it, they allow and even encourage it. In other words it's an official policy in everything but name.
Given how often it's used if there was any official view against it the policy should have been removed asap. Either that or wikipedia is incompetently run as this is a area that needs some official control.

Re:Why?

[Scorchmon]

"If your web comic isn't getting enough people thinking it's notable and campaigning for it, then yes, it probably isn't."

Woah woah woah, hold on a second there. Campaigning for it? The second anyone jumps into an argument about notability on Wikipedia is the same second the editors/admins immediately call you out for being "sock puppet" or "meat puppet." Wikipedia is in its own little world, and any time someone new shows up, the established people over there immediately go on the defensive and attack you.

Re:Why?

[colinbrash]

Wikipedia might be a novel human achievement, it might be the best they could do, but at the end of the day, it's a boat that almost floats; not good enough to be put to practical use.

I agree with you up until this point. Wikipedia does have a practical use, and it does serve as an encyclopedia of sorts. I don't feel that I can use it for "important" matters (i.e. things I really care about), but it does work for checking little things.

One of the problems I run into is that every time I go look at something I have any knowledge about, I find one or more errors that I feel need to be corrected. And I have absolutely no desire to spend my time contributing to the site. So it just bugs me. Oh well.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that the wikipedia people officially say not to do this and that deletion are not supposed to be popularity contests (it's supposed to be about notability not number of rabid fanboys). I mean the GPs statement shows the problems with the current notability guidelines rather well I think. Even some of the people who are pro-wikipedia have no idea what its about anymore.

Re:Why?

[Shalcker]

Looking at comment page, it seems that "Notability" is more of cognitive exploit gaining attention... Everyone thinks they understand what notability is, and around 90% of wikipedia content doesn't pass as what they think is notable. Then someone requests article deletion citing reasons including notability... people look at it and think "well, i know that all other reasons are wrong and can be discussed, but i can not prove this thing is notable" (or they fail to convince others when they try to), and that's it - article gets deleted.

As with any social exploit it is used until it breaks to gain leverage to their personal visions of what wikipedia should be. As more people discover it it is used more widely, gaining more attention... 64.9% of requests for deletions citing notability is pretty damning.

Then at some point it will most likely be changed to something less widely applicable.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I don't see why all entries couldn't be accepted, and the user filter by a number of methods. There could be the "4 out of 5 dentists" thought this article on teeth was spot-on (and they should know) method. Or the 66% of English teachers would fail this entry on _manifest destiny_ because of poor organization, but 75% of history teachers think it has merit method. Or the 99% of Japanese readers do not endorse this article on _Hiroshima_, while 50.5% of American readers do method. Or the 87% of the people who read this article modded it down just because method.

To keep down the visible bulk at the article level, knowledgable peers or everybody could mod down to the paragraph or sentence level. The reader would filter for, e. g., the best 550 words made up of the best-ranked sentences or paragraphs.
Would it take much more time (for the user) to search by thresholding? At high level you might only see the work by L. Frank Baum; at the next level you find the movie with Dorothy and Toto; finally you would get the broadway production: _The Whiz_.

Lately it seems the Wikipedia is trying to be another Encyclopaedia Britannica. Don't we already have one?

Re:Why?

[ShieldW0lf]

Let me phrase that another way; My experience has led me to consider Wikipedia a perfectly valid way to look up details about an obscure reference to something Isaac Asimov wrote for conversation purposes, but when I happen to click on a google link to wikipedia while I'm looking up something technical, I often (usually?) find it to be in part or whole inaccurate, misleading or wrong.

I find wikipedia is full of the kind of advice you get about database normalization from an old school self-taught MySQL/PHP coder who thinks they know everything because they built a forum that gets a lot of hits, so to speak.

Let me be the first to say

[OffTheLip]

thank you, thank you and thank you. Really, I mean it. Flame on!

slashdot entry

[Mushdot]

I don't see why there can't be room for any kind of articles as you only come across what you search for - it's not like you are holding a 1 metre thick book where you have to wade through a million random articles to find what you want. Although initially sceptical of Wikipedia I do actually find it quite useful these days as a starting point for many a piece of research.

Funnily enough, the slashdot subculture section has become a victim and been removed. It's through that article on Wikipedia that I got a grip on the untold jokes/cliche's that abound here.

Re:slashdot entry

[mdd4696]

If anyone and anything were given articles on Wikipedia, you *would* have to wade through millions of junk articles to find what you want.

One important requirement for articles on Wikipedia is that they are verifiable. That means providing sources for the information in the article, allowing others to ensure that the article is accurate. If there are no published sources which contain information on the subject of the article, there would be no way of evaluating it. I doubt that the authors of an article on some kid's garage band could provide a reference from outside of their circle of family and friends.

Wikipedia is a tertiary source. Not a primary source, not a secondary source. Articles on Wikipedia are written about what is already published elsewhere. This is an attempt to keep Wikipedia neutral, and minimize the influence that a particular editor's biases might have.

Re:slashdot entry

[interiot]

One answer is that there are many wikis out there. For almost everything that Wikipedia says it's not, there's another wiki out there that will cover the information you're interested in working on. For many of them, Wikimedia itself hosts those wikis, so it's not always a matter of DELETE DELETE, sometimes it's a matter of finding the right wiki. For instance, Wikipedia might not like to have really detailed programming guides on its site, but the content would be perfectly suitable for Wikimedia's Wikibooks. Wikipedia is a little too straight-laced sometimes, but there's Uncyclopedia if you want to add a joke to an article or otherwise go overboard with a subject. Wikibooks no longer takes game walkthroughs, but there's Strategy wiki for that.

Re:slashdot entry

[damonlab]

You can still find a copy of the slashdot subculture section on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/*/en.wikipedia.org/wiki /Slashdot_subculture

Re:slashdot entry

[k7net]

It's still available here: http://www.answers.com/topic/slashdot-subculture

Re:slashdot entry

[The Walking Dude]

Intriguing; I mentioned the Slashdot Subculture page in my front page Digg submission just 10 hours ago. Did you read that, or is it synchronicity? I enjoyed reading 'Slashdot Subculture', and I thought it was well done. It was the only all in one source for that information. When I first joined Slashdot I could tell that I was missing the inside jokes. That article helped me understand what the hell people were talking about, and it showed me that the comments can be an intricate form of art. It improved my appreciation of this site. Here are the the votes for deletion of the Slashdot subculture page found via the Digg comments.

Re:slashdot entry

[rdoger6424]

s/wikimedia/wikia perhaps? The company is owned by Jimbo himself, and provides free mediawiki hosting.

Re:slashdot entry

[Stone Rhino]

The page was deleted because, as this discussion says, wikipedia is a tertiary source, and therefore has to be based on previously-published sources. There aren't any published guides to slashdot culture to base an article on, so it's a matter of "original research," where writers are basing the article on their own first-hand knowledge. No one else can verify that, so it can't be used.

Shit Casserole My Arse!

[syousef]

Don't hold back. Tell us what you really think about Wikipedia.

IMHO the problem with wikipedia is that they included the prefix -pedia in their name. Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. It's more a global store of knowledge - a wiki - and ideas of varying quality will creep in much more than a published encyclopedia. Claims that anarchistic editing makes for higher accuracy than a published book are just unrealistic - when you set up such expectations and they are dashed you get very vocal critics of wikipedia such as yourself. If you treat it like a published work of course you'll be disappointed. Even with a published work you should check and re-check any fact you read if it's at all important. With wikipedia this is even more true since anyone can contribute not just recognised experts. To call it a shit casserole though is going way too far. It's an excellent free resource if all you want is a general idea on a topic or if that information is for interest and not something you'll base work or important decisions on.

Re:Shit Casserole My Arse!

[danielk1982]

suffix -pedia

Re:Shit Casserole My Arse!

[bgerlich]

Hey last time I checked encyclopedia is derived from greek and it means (not literally) "general knowledge", so Wikipedia has every right to call itself that. If someone uses the argument that meaning of the words evolve then I send this one right back at you and Wikipedia is redefining the meaning of the word "encyclopedia" for the 21st century.

Re:Shit Casserole My Arse!

[yusing]

Re the (suffix) -pedia :

Let's suppose for a second that America is sometimes called a democracy for real reasons, not just to snow the untutored. We've never been a democracy, nor are all men (treated) equal, nor did the slaves enjoy life, liberty, pursuit.

And yet the ideal remains: it's a work in progress. In the same way, the founders and workers of Wikipedia would like to see it approach -pedia stature, if asymptotically. In some (more empirical) areas it already are one.

Those who sniffle about its lack of hi-bred values (like adequate citation) are probably the same people who snicker at the suckers who believed the democracy ploy. And yet, who knows, we may get there yet.

Re:Shit Casserole My Arse!

[Petrushka]

Hey last time I checked encyclopedia is derived from greek and it means (not literally) "general knowledge",

Just an FYI: "-pedia" (Greek paideia) means "education".

Re:Shit Casserole My Arse!

[TheRaven64]

A closer translation would be 'all teaching,' a claim that no encyclopedia can really make, but which most aim towards.

Re:Shit Casserole My Arse!

[syousef]

Yes, suffix. I do know the difference. My silly mistake...the kind I make at 6 in the morning when I've been to bed at 1am and had to get up at 4:30.

Re:Shit Casserole My Arse!

[bgerlich]

FYI "paideia" in greek also means knowledge, culture and upbringing (good).

Re:Shit Casserole My Arse!

[Bloke down the pub]

Perhaps he was thinking of "pediaphile"? I hear you can find many of them lurking in the tubes of the intarwebs.

To avoid Vandalism

[superpulpsicle]

I would like to see them get rid of anonymous edits. And also make the registration process effort consuming. Only people with accounts should be able to edit, set the minimum age to 21. Hells, why not link it up to the drivers license numbers. Cut the vandalism in half and you'll save alot of good wikipedians time.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[aztracker1]

I would have to agree on not allowing anonymous edits.. not sure about having to give a driver's license number, but hell, manual/telephone verification could be an idea... worked for bbsing back in the day.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[Zorglub1234]

Hells, why not link it up to the drivers license numbers.

Why should I prove that I know how to drive in order to edit Wikipedia ?

More generally, you are assuming that anonymous editors, people younger than 21 and people without a drivers license/ID currently bring more bad things than good things to Wikipedia. You may be right, but I don't see any reason to believe it just because you say it. Many anonymous editors make excellent contributions to Wikipedia, as do a lot of teenagers. What is the point of cutting down vandalism if we lose more valuable content simultaneously ?

Zorglub

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[lordofthechia]

Hmmm.. Make anonymous edits get queued till someone who's registered can validate them? Once validated they can be posted.

If you don't want your comments screened first then register. Though I agree, requiring a Driver's license may be a bit much.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[squiggleslash]

Wikipedia is the 1994 USENET in 2006.

People exaggerate its flaws and underplay its usefulness, but everyone secretly knows it's the number one site on the 'net to start at if you need any kind of information.

People will propose stuff like what you've done. Some will, however, respond by pointing out that Wikipedia's fluidity and usefulness is actually directly proportional to the ease of access, and so any attempt to moderate it is doomed to failure. Others will run off and start their own forks, which will have all the heavy handed moderation supposedly necessary, and each will fail miserably.

Then, over time, the spammers and others with a commercial interest in vandalising Wikipedia will rise. Wikipedia's usefulness will start to drop. People will be turned off by it as a useful resource. And, many, hopefully many, many, years from now, it'll live on as a wasteland, a sad relic of an idealistic age.

But for now, it's the number one site on the 'net to start at if you need any kind of information, and just like Google Groups keeps the good in Usenet alive today, archives of Wikipedia will be awesome for "those in the know" in 2018.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[yusing]

I'd rather not have to sign in to fix a typo or clarify a phrase. IF anonymity encourages vandalism, it also encourages contributions that would not otherwise be made.

As for telephone verification ... who's going to do the vetting? "BBS days" were a whole different world, and the number of social engineers is WAY up these days.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[yusing]

Punishing all teens for the idiocy of a few is an idiotic solution. Wikipedia is the sort of place that a SMART teen might WANT to hang out; that should be encouraged. Like copy-protection, your blanket solution punishes the innocent most.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[saforrest]

And also make the registration process effort consuming. Only people with accounts should be able to edit, set the minimum age to 21.

Vandalism happens, and would whether or not accounts were required. I don't really understand why people have such a hard time with anonymous edits. Fully open editing, which includes spontaneous anonymous edits, are exactly how Wikipedia got so huge in the first place.

Wikipedia entered mainstream consciousness by adopting a radically open position. Why is that now, that is finally is mainstream, that people consistently want to change the very thing that led to its success?

I've yet to see any evidence that the number of vandals is rising faster than the number of "honest" users. If vandalism was such a problem that it undermined the whole effort, don't you think Wikipedia would simply have never got off the ground in the first place?

Hells, why not link it up to the drivers license numbers.

Let's see, the first premise there is that any adult would-be-Wikipedian has a driver's licence. Even if this were the case, we would need to authenticate every sort of driver's licence from everyplace on Earth, since edits to Wikipedia can come from anywhere. Then there is the constant risk of exposing this data to would-be-identity thieves.

Finally, there is the fact that users with accounts have, as of now, a degree of anonymity in the sense that the only information presented to the world is what they choose to. Their IP addresses are exposed only to admins. This would be lost with your proposed system. I don't see why we should not allow edits from reasonable people who don't want to expose personal details.

To summarize, Wikipedia's success is due to its radical openness. The reports criticizing this position have (in my opinion) not exposed fundamental weaknesses in the system, but reflect simply a reactionary position towards it. To change the model would be to shut off Wikipedia's engine of growth. Don't change what ain't broke.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[Iriestx]

I don't live in the US and don't have or need a 'drivers license.' Why should I not be able to contribute?

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[fimbulvetr]

Maybe that could do it...Limit anonymous edits to changing +/50 characters or something.

Then you could have a Special page for all anonymous edits done, with a diff so it'd make it easy to find vandalism.

It still keeps the barrier to edit low so people can fix typos and bad grammar, but it doesn't let them post/remove entire articles/paragraphs. Also prevent page creation and deletion. Seems reasonable to me.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[Cygnus78]

Many anonymous editors make excellent contributions to Wikipedia

Yes, and I remember this article that found out that it was often the anonymous edits that added the actual content to Wikipedia while the registered accounts merly acted as a big cleanup crew, fixing spelling errors and moving stuff around.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[Anonymous Coward]

The registered accounts actually degraded the quality of the articles. The constant editing and rewriting hardly ever led to an improvement and usually led to a less readable or less complete article.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[hankwang]

Finally, there is the fact that users with accounts have, as of now, a degree of anonymity in the sense that the only information presented to the world is what they choose to. Their IP addresses are exposed only to admins.

Actually, not even regular administrators can do this. There are only some 15 wikipedians on English Wikipedia with checkuser privileges, and they may only use that privilege for very specific circumstances (basically deal with serious abuse).

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[chad_r]

Wikipedia is the 1994 USENET in 2006.

And wikipedia moderation is the 1997 alt.config newsgroup.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Limiting the number of characters anonymous users can change is a moronic idea. It carries with it an implicit assumption that small changes are unimportant and thus would lead to them not being checked as thoroughly, when the basic nature of human language is that the insertion or removal of certain short words(the simplest example is probably "not") can change the meaning of a sentence completely.

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[aztracker1]

So, allow for moderators... people that have been selected, or elected to maintain certain articles, or article classes... show the "anonymous" changes with the strikeout vs. backgrounded text, and allow for a moderator to either approve, or deny the modifications... also allow moderators to temporarily suspend anonymous editing of articles, to prevent flooding...

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[georgewilliamherbert]

And wikipedia moderation is the 1997 alt.config newsgroup.

Oh dear god, no. Yes, but noooooooo.......

Re:To avoid Vandalism

[pilkul]

Wikipedia is already so big (within the top 20 sites in the world) that there is already a huge incentive to spam it. Wikipedia is currently holding its own against the spammers -- it helps that, unlike Usenet, the servers are centrally managed -- and I don't see why the situation might get worse in the future

Sounds like Wikipedia needs to study a few ideas

[HarryCaul]

First among them, The Long Tail, and why it would benefit the site to take advantage of it rather than ignore it.

The whole "notability" criteria seems very much like 1980s thinking. So many lessons of the internet being ignored there.

The reasons for a notability requirement

[Dachannien]

With notability comes verifiability. If I submit a Wikipedia article about my cat, filled with adorable pictures and tales of the cat's day-by-day exploits, it may fit into the "room for everything" model that some snubbed band members might believe is right, but who's to say that all that drivel about my cat isn't just a bunch of lies? But if it turns out that I'm the President of the United States, then my cat becomes notable, because there are undoubtedly numerous verifiable news reports from reputable agencies detailing various events in the life of my cat.

It amuses me that most of the people complaining about the "notability" requirement are the same people whose vanity-based Wikipedia articles were seen for what they are - self-aggrandizement - and subsequently removed.

Also, for the record, I don't have a cat.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Jott42]

And I have never had a Wikipedia article about myself. But please tell me: what is the harm if I would put up an article about my (hypothetical) cat, filled with lies? As the cat does not exist, it would not really matter. And very few, if any, would find and read the article. And any outrageous claims that would surface to the general knowledge, could easily be corrected by other editors.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, for the record, I don't have a cat. You do now.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[flyingsquid]

And I have never had a Wikipedia article about myself. But please tell me: what is the harm if I would put up an article about my (hypothetical) cat, filled with lies? As the cat does not exist, it would not really matter. And very few, if any, would find and read the article. And any outrageous claims that would surface to the general knowledge, could easily be corrected by other editors.

OK, how about we take a cat, and write a Wikipedia article on that cat, and THEN we put the cat in a steel box with a bit of radioactive material and a geiger counter...

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[interiot]

For what it's worth, the set of topics that are Notable is a subset of the topics that are Verifiable... they're not the same thing. [1] Verifiable facts include that 923049123581435834435803984 is an integer, the data on my passport, and the gross income of Walmart in February 1982. However, most of those aren't generally considered encyclopedic, and if we open up the possibility for storing all those, Wikipedia would eventually have over a billion pages, and it might be hard to maintain all of them (rarely-read articles are spam and vandal magnets as it is). And in the case of integers, it's not possible to have enough space to store all of them. [2]

As an aside, Citizendium has decided to not use Notability as an inclusion criteria, but rather to focus more on whether an article is maintainable. Presumably with restricted logins, spam and vandalism will be much less of a problem, so this might work for them.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Dachannien]

In other words, if a lie falls in the forest, will anybody catch it?

You wouldn't expect that from an encyclopedia, would you? I mean, somewhere hidden in that shelf full of dusty volumes might be an article about some Britannica editor's cat. And while you may not care about the cat - and might not ever see that article - you still expect everything in that encyclopedia to be true, whether you can personally verify it or not.

Well, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia also. By its wiki nature, the truthfulness (truthiness?) of it is in constant flux, but part of the goal of the project is that everything in Wikipedia must be true. Just because that goal is unlikely ever to be completed (because of constant poor edits, the ever-marching progress of time, etc.) doesn't mean that Wikipedia should just say "screw it" and let people put up whatever crap they want to.

There are other rules on Wikipedia that are somewhat related, such as neutral point of view, no original research, and the "What Wikipedia is Not" page. These rules almost always have their roots in encouraging the verifiability of information posted to articles, and verifiability has its roots in attempting to encyclopedize just the facts (ma'am).

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Das Modell]

It matters because Wikipedia is not Blogspot or Livejournal, and filling up WP with garbage is not cool.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Jott42]

OK. Point taken. Lets remove the outright lies, and only keep the things that are verifiable. That will let existing rock bands keep their pages. Where is the problem then? (I am not arguing against neutral point of view.)

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Dachannien]

There are other policies that distinguish topics whose non-notability is evident by their non-verifiability from those whose non-notability is simply because there are better ways to present information. For example, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Sure, 923049123581435834435803984 may be an integer, but that information is already conveyed on the page for integer by definition. In fact, many integers do have their own articles, in particular those with unusual properties that aren't covered elsewhere.

The point is that the type of article whose notability almost always comes into dispute (ending up on Articles for Deletion) becomes disputed because there is no way to verify the material in the article. The other articles you're talking about usually end up merged into other articles by a very obvious consensus of the people interested in commenting in the deletion discussion.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Dachannien]

How do we know whether the material in the "Megatronic Flying Squid Faces from Hell" article is true, or whether the band even exists? Once you've removed all the unverifiable stuff, there would be no article left, and that's why such articles get deleted.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

What I expect from E. Brittanica and from Wikipedia is very different things...

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Jott42]

Verifieable how? Websearches exlusivly? In published works? In any language? Or verifiable by interviewing the subject? Which the definition of verifiability are you arguing? The band can easily pass the Wipipedia definition and still get removed, if all the articles are published locally in Ottawa and not available on the web, as the US editors will find nothing about them in their local newspapers. But they may very well still have a verifiable existance.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Dachannien]

If you're an Ottawanian (?) and want to go to the library to research an article in a reputable source of information like the local newspaper, more power to you. Just remember to cite the source so that someone else can go verify it if they want. There are numerous articles on Wikipedia whose sources are not online.

Interviewing the subject of an article would not be sufficient to be considered verifiable, unless you got your interview published in a reputable external source. There's a rule against putting original research on Wikipedia - you have to get your research published in a reputable source first, and then you can put that on Wikipedia.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, for the record, I don't have a cat.

Funny, wikipedia says otherwise.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Jott42]

So why then do you need the notability criterion in addition to the verifiability? It takes care of all things in Wikipedia beign "true". The search engine takes care of finding the article you are looking for. (There could be a problem of several people having the same name, but a ranking score could solve that.)

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[hey!]

With notability comes verifiability.

This may be true. But it has no bearing on notability. I assume the point of "notability" is to prevent Wikipedia from morphing into a social networking or advertising site.

Wiktionary defines Notable as "Worthy of notice; remarkable; memorable; noted or distinguished." Note there are two alternative definitions within this definition: a normative one ("You should take notice of George Orwell") and descriptive/empirical one ("Jango Fett is a noted fictional character in the minds of many people."). It seems to me that a bias towards a descriptive stanard of notability is reasonable in a project like Wikipedia. This greatly increases its usefulness, because there are plenty of reference works out there that reflect the pririties of a "serious" editorial viewpoint.

This may deny the Wikipedia a degree of gravitas, that is true. But the set of "serious" topics is not identical to the set of "useful" topics -- it's a subset. It may be just as useful for me to have a reference work with a biographical entry of every character in the Marvel Comics universe as one that lists every spoken language in the Indian subcontinent. Maybe more useful on a day to day basis.

If I had to choose between a law which outlawed reference works on comic book characters and one that outlawed information on languages spoken in a geographical area, naturally I'd prefer to outlaw the more frivolous type of reference. Banning that information would cause less harm.

But we don't have to ban information just because it is not "serious".

The President's cat example is a good one. I can't imagine ever wanting to read about any such thing. But there are lots of people who do; there are probably even people who write books about the history of pet keeping by presidents. Information about your cat might be interesting to those people, but it not of unique interest to them. If it were of unique interest, it would by definition be notable.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[yusing]

Old-fashioned encyclopedias were just as open to errors and lies, only they were concocted by experts.

I prefer transparent errors and lies to misinformation skillfully concocted to protect reputations and warp reality for the benefit of the "expert" class.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[yusing]

But some things aren't "verifiable"... like well-informed opinions, and theories... that need to be in encyclopedias.

Who's going to decide what the "outright lies" are? That might take an expert. If the subject is obscure, there might not *be* any experts.

You're only substituting a worse problem.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[yusing]

NPOV is one of the funnier, more ironic things about Wikipedia. Is there or has there ever been a human being with a "neutral point-of-view"? If so, would they be passionate enough to write encyclopedia articles?

You're right that -for now- the mobs have too much power. And NPOV is WAY TOO SUBTLE for most mobsters to understand. But I like to think that the situation is much like what happened early on with the internet: when millions of newbies first hit the 'net, they were like vandals, they had TERRIBLE manners. Most were quickly subdued by the adults on the forums they wanted to hang out on, and learned to have some manners or get lost. The same thing needs to happen on WP.

Rather than leave forever (just until you forget the source of your pain), please come back when you can and help civilize.

For example, some people who've done a lot of work on pages think they own them; they're confused, and will need to be gently disabused of their confusion. Wait 6 months or a year, then quietly come back and make the necessary changes.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Merusdraconis]

In the webcomics world, they've butted heads over notability so much that most commentators have advocated abandoning Wikipedia for a dedicated webcomic wiki.

The problem appears to be that a webcomic is usually considered notable by reputation and influence, things that traditionally are hard to provide sources for (not least because the first response when someone asks about it is "you don't know Girly?!") This has led to several entries of exceedingly notable webcomics being deleted from Wikipedia, including a well-regarded satirical webcomic about webcomics that got major attention when it riffed on another webcomic's joke, something that doesn't translate well to a source; and an old hand in webcomics who doesn't have a huge amount of readers but is a significant influence on other artists, which again doesn't translate well as a source because webcomic creators are not in the habit of talking about their influences other than Calvin and Hobbes.

One could say, "well, why don't you get in and help and make sure the notable comics don't get deleted?" It's simple: we don't have time to babysit the Internet. The webcomics community have made it quite clear to the editors involved that they're doing these comics a wrong, and they keep putting up important comics for deletion. Fights on Wikipedia go to the most persistent, not who's right, and these editors are particularly persistent. It's disheartening to spend our time writing about something that's notable to us, like Checkerboard Nightmare or Girly, only to have it trashed by the people 'in charge' as soon as our backs are turned. It's better in the long run to throw up our hands and go somewhere where Wikipedia's endemic problems don't get in the way of having an accurate picture of webcomics, even at the expense of Google position.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[mdwh2]

But some things aren't "verifiable"... like well-informed opinions, and theories... that need to be in encyclopedias.

You're confusing things - it's not the opinion or theory itself which must be verified, it's whether someone has that opinion, or that the theory has been proposed.

If someone famous said "Bush looks like a monkey", we wouldn't have to verify whether Bush looks like a monkey, because we wouldn't expect Wikipedia to state that as fact. What Wikipedia would say is "So-and-so said that Bush looks like a monkey", in which case, we just need verification that this is true.

Who's going to decide what the "outright lies" are? That might take an expert. If the subject is obscure, there might not *be* any experts.

That's why Wikipedia insists on verifiability, so you don't have the issue of people deciding whether it's true or not - you go to the published sources.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[parcifal]

Wikipedia already has tags for all sorts of things. Why can't "not notable" be a tag, and all candidate pages be marked with it? Deletion and the subsequent denial of information to normal users should not be the decision of a select few.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

OK. Point taken. Lets remove the outright lies, and only keep the things that are verifiable. That will let existing rock bands keep their pages. Where is the problem then? (I am not arguing against neutral point of view.)

You still don't seem to be grasping the point. Unless the information about those rock bands is taken from reputable sources (i.e., not the blathering of some fans in a "blog"), it is indistinguishable from outright lies and should be treated as such.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Duncan3]

Something is notable in Wikipedia if enough people edit it, but that doesn't mean it is.

Something is accurate in Wikipedia if it's in line with the thinking of the person that edits it the most, which may be the one putting in false info.

In MOST cases that works out rather well, but I know of many many articles full of complete BS, which only makes sense when you look at the history.

Re:The reasons for a notability requirement

[Dachannien]

If you think that the deletion policy over a particular field of articles has been handled poorly, you can always propose a new guideline for handling articles in that field. Rather than monitoring every single article on a continual basis, let the policy do the work.

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs to study a few idea

[Jott42]

Exactly! The removal of "non-notable" articles makes Wikipedia less usable, not more.
(And to argue that the non-notable information is available on the internet anyway is strange: in that case we don't need Wikipedia at all, as we have Gooogle.)

Missing the important news

[tttonyyy]

Slashdot, in true tradition, misses the current happenings in Wikipedia world.

The big story at the moment about linking to external videos on YouTube (and other video sources).

This is all started with Fox serving takedown notices to Quicksilverscreen for linking to YouTube videos, under the assertion that linking to copyright infringing material is, in itself, illegal. Hence the repercussions for Wikipedia (and, pretty much any site governed by US law).

C'mon slashdot, keep up!

Re:Missing the important news

[interiot]

The legal issues weren't the only issue with YouTube links. YouTube links are generally not reliable sources (just because a video has the CNN logo in the corner doesn't mean the video hasn't been modified or fabricated, whereas if it comes from cnn.com, that's much less likely to happen). Also, Wikipedia in general tries to be very respectful of copyright. WP:EL does mention the contributory infringement issue, but as much as we internally argue over fair use gray areas and open content, it seems like it's part of the culture to avoid copyvio issues.

Notability isn't enforced strictly enough

[Animats]

Wikipedia's problem is bloat. Most of the articles about anything important were created before article 500,000. At 1.5 million, most of the articles are junk. It's bottom-feeder stuff now.

Popular culture is a significant problem. There are far too many Star {Wars|Trek|Gate} articles. There's a Wikipedia article for every Star Wars comic book. For a while, someone was trying to create one for each character in each story in each comic book, but that was beaten back.

Then there's the ongoing effort to put every musical composition available in Wikipedia. A wiki is the wrong tool for that job. CDDB/Gracenote and IMDB have real databases for that sort of information, with useful linking and searching, but Wikipedia doesn't have the structure for that.

Wikipedia bloat impacts quality. It takes a huge number of contributors just to undo vandalism and clean up messes. Those contributors are now stuck cleaning up a mountain of dreck. They're falling behind.

That's hard on a volunteer effort. There are a few editors for whom Wikipedia is their day job, but the only one known to be full time is a political lobbyist. The thing just isn't staffed to deal with all the dreck.

Re:Notability isn't enforced strictly enough

[AlGrinch]

I use wikipedia all the time. I thoroughly enjoy the information. I think it is a great of example of what is good about the internet. A community of people donating the time and knowledge to betterment of us all. Like any source of information you must be a critical thinker and verify its validity, yet I find it to be very good for the most part. I would consider being critical if I was paying to use the service. I find it unreasonable to be too critical of something that is free.

Re:Notability isn't enforced strictly enough

[stud9920]

Popular culture is a significant problem. There are far too many Star {Wars|Trek|Gate} articles. There's a Wikipedia article for every Star Wars comic book. For a while, someone was trying to create one for each character in each story in each comic book, but that was beaten back.

How better would the Wikipedia be if these articles were not present ? That's the point of an Internet encyclopedia : information that is not pertinent to YOU does not hurt financially or otherwise by just being there.

If some music nerd wants me to know John Lennon was wearing green socks on 4 April 1967 when he recorded A Day in the Life, it's not going to change dramatically the price of the Wikipedia. Heck, if I clicked through the hierarchy until I reached the article "Clothing of John Lennon during the SPLHCB session of 4 April 1967", I may be the only person who ever clicks the links, so it's virtually costless.

What if that data was actually in the "Great Britain" article because the music nerd thinks everyone who is interested in Great Britain should know about the colour of the socks of John Lennon during each recording session of Sergeant Pepper ? Guess what, YOU can edit the page to remove it (most authors won't actually mind) or move it to a more appropriate page (most authors would understand).

IMO there is no such thing as too much information.

Re:Notability isn't enforced strictly enough

[yusing]

Most of the articles about anything important were created before article 500,000. At 1.5 million, most of the articles are junk. It's bottom-feeder stuff now.

"Anything important"?? That's a completely subjective measure. The first 500, 000 entries were probably the most obvious ones. But much of what's "important" isn't obvious. (I'm sure you haven't scanned the next million articles to ascertain that they're "bottom-feeder" stuff. And equally sure that you're not qualified to make that judgement for all of those articles.)

My guess is that it wasn't until after the first 500,000 "popular" and easy subjects (including technical, non-controversial ones) were created that some of the most interesting articles — more likely to be "important" to people who already have some knowledge in an area — were created.

It's the job of WP editors to ascertain what's "important". They're developing criteria for that. Is an article on an obscure archeological site "important"? It might be "bottom-feed" to you, because you don't understand its significance. Likewise, an "obscure" band might have significant "importance" in the history of music.

Paper encyclopedias obviously can't bulge with highly specialist information. But what's highly specialist is up to specialists. There's no need for WP to constrain itself to what traditional 'pedias were constrained to. If John wants to write about something that only 20 people a year will read, where's the problem? Where WP might lack in depth, it might excel in breadth. I don't see the reasoning behind size constraints; notability, while still a very subjective criterion, seems a useful one at this point in WP's evolution. It's only had a few years to learn what the dead tree publishers had more than a century to learn.

Re:Notability isn't enforced strictly enough

[oliderid]

Let's see...How did I use Wikipedia today:

Wikipedia helped me to select my DIVX in the Stargate Season 10 torrent.
I found their summary quite helpful. There are few episodes completly disconnected from the main plot and I didn't want to see them.

I have also used Wikipedia to document myself on Ottoman Invasions in Hungary. And Alliances between Polish and Hungarians crowns to face it.

The great thing about it is that it gives information about anything you wish. And in my case, I prefer it remains that way.

Re:Notability isn't enforced strictly enough

[bcrowell]

One thing that I was shocked by was the number of articles that were nominated for featured article status, when in fact, IMO, they should have been deleted as not notable. Here's one example.. It was nominated six times, and discussed seriously each time.

Another pathetic thing is the number of articles on $foo that end with a section on "$foo in Popular Culture," with that section taking up 25% of the article. Any time you start a list in a wikipedia article, the list is guaranteed to grow like a cancer.

It takes a huge number of contributors just to undo vandalism and clean up messes. Those contributors are now stuck cleaning up a mountain of dreck. They're falling behind.
That's why, in my experience, contributing to Wikipedia has become such an unrewarding experience. Articles rise to a certain level of quality (and not a very high one, either), and then 100% of the positive effort being expended on edits is being expended on keeping it from going to a lower level of quality.

Re:Notability isn't enforced strictly enough

[Nasarius]

Another pathetic thing is the number of articles on $foo that end with a section on "$foo in Popular Culture," with that section taking up 25% of the article.

Thank you for mentioning this. I can't tell you how many short articles on serious subjects I've seen that include references to every stupid joke in Family Guy, computer games, and obscure web comics. You've inspired me to start cleaning it up, starting with Pyromancy.

Re:Notability isn't enforced strictly enough

[Improv]

It is hard to focus on the quality of articles we have when people write about crap. Judgement is subjective, sure, but that's no excuse not to exercise good judgement. Good judgement is the core of doing what needs doing in almost any endeavor -- if people ran away shrieking "oh, that's subjective!" every time, nothing worthwhile would get done.

Just as libraries do not (and should not) roll dice when they're picking what books to order to fill their shelves, encyclopedias should not have articles about any old thing. "What will still be interesting in 50 years? What has greater impact to society and civilisation?" These are the kinds of questions that can lead to a good encyclopedia. With fewer articles, each would get more love, and we'd have a healthier project - everything else could go to wikia, where we don't need to worry about the reputation they get.

Re:Notability isn't enforced strictly enough

[91degrees]

Popular culture is a significant problem. There are far too many Star {Wars|Trek|Gate} articles. There's a Wikipedia article for every Star Wars comic book.

It's a geek culture rather than a pop culture thing. Kim possible's mum gets an entry, but Hasselhoff's character Mitch Buchannon redirects to Baywatch. Star Trek has every episode covered and many of the starship classes. It's not like Baywatch was unpopular but it was clearly less so amongst the wikipedia editting crowd.

I'm notable

[bluefoxlucid]

According to the strictest definition of Wikipedia's notability guides, I'm apparently notable by Google. Searching for my real name shows mostly matches for me, and a few hundred of them at that; that's a specific notability criteria.

I've also published 4 LWN.net articles; but that's not a direct route to fame. Also I'm Security+ certified; apparently CompTIA claims that over 25,000 people hold the cert, which is fewer than Mensa can claim (I'm part of a small but well-known group in the market?).

On the other hand, I'm jobless and have no real achievements. I speak a lot on mailing lists and publish articles and such and sometimes get a little attention. Be careful how you define "Notable."

Re:I'm notable

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the strictest definition of Wikipedia's notability guides [wikipedia.org], I'm apparently notable by Google. Searching for my real name shows mostly matches for me...

[...]

I speak a lot on mailing lists and publish articles and such and sometimes get a little attention. Be careful how you define "Notable."

Dig deeper and you'll find exclusions for things such as blogs and other 'end-user' created content. The guidelines are meant as a guage for editors and not absolute rules... every situation is different and should be judged accordingly.

Re:I'm notable

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps a better definition of 'notable' is 'do unfamiliar people actually look for you in a manner other than paid work'. Just because you can find info on yourself doesn't mean that other people want to.

Re:I'm notable

[DerekLyons]

According to the strictest definition of Wikipedia's notability guides, I'm apparently notable by Google. Searching for my real name shows mostly matches for me, and a few hundred of them at that; that's a specific notability criteria.

Another sure way to get 'noted' at Wikipedia is to be a murder or rape victim and make the front page of CNN.com, even if its only once and only for one day.

The question is, why is this noteable to the WP?

[maidix]

What Wikipedia editors determined wasn't worthy of an entry, Washington Post editors deemed worthy of an article. Much like in the accuracy comparison with Encyclopedia Brittanica, Wikipedia has once again demonstrated that they are the ones practicing higher standards. Sure, the newspapers and the encyclopedias and everyone else who's losing eyeballs to Wikipedia will tell us all why it can't happen... each and every day that it's happening.

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs to study a few idea

[antifoidulus]

Sometimes brevity is a virtue.. Yes you can search, and the tools we have today are incredible, but ultimately there is a big pile of information to slog through, and the less slogging you have to do to get to information you want the better.

It's akin to "feature bloat" in computer programs. Yeah some of those whiz-bang features might be useful to a handful of people, but to the majority they just clutter up the interface and can potentially slow the program down. Encyclopedias should give you a brief overview, ie what most people want to know, and then point you elsewhere for more information if you desire it.

Admitting there are checks and balances?

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

Whilst the casual description of the deletion process, illustrated with random examples, is presented in a fairly lighthearted manner, it is an admission that there are some quality procedures in place at Wikipedia.

You do have to wonder if they chose their examples to try and give them the notability they lack.

Washington Post gets its facts wrong--twice

[Arnold Reinhold]

The Post article quotes Jimmy Wales as saying that the decision to exclude an article is based on "a discussion among known editors." The article goes on to ask who those editors are and answers its own question "these editors are called 'administrators' and they get their jobs after being nominated and voted in by the great mass of Wikipedia contributors." Well, that is wrong on two counts. The discussions on deleting articles are in no way restricted to admins. Admins do determine what the consensus of the discussion is after a fixed time period and have access to the tools to actually delete the article, but they have no special role in the discussion. The second error concerns how admins are selected. There is no vote by "by the great mass of Wikipedia contributors." There is a nomination and review process and the final decision is made by an even smaller group known as "bureaucrats." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_fo r_adminship . That's two errors in a single paragraph, but I suppose with tight budgets in the newspaper business these days, they can't afford the kind of scrutiny for accuracy that Wikipedia articles get.

Re:Washington Post gets its facts wrong--twice

[Scorchmon]

"The discussions on deleting articles are in no way restricted to admins."

It might as well be considering they're going to call your opinion worthless if you don't have hundreds of edits on Wikipedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_sock_puppet

Re:Washington Post gets its facts wrong--twice

[Arnold Reinhold]

Hundreds of edits don't make you an admin. I'm not saying that the Wikipedia deleition process is without flaws. There is some cliquishness. My point is that a publication in the main stream media that loves to write about inaccuracies in Wikipedia can't be bothered to do some basic fact checking. All the information on the deletion and admin selection processes are available on the Wikipedia web site and reasonably easy to find. And I suspect the reason it wasn't checked is shrinking staffs due to economic pressure on the newspaper industry. Wikipedia may have more fact checkers than the Washington Post has readers. Reader beware everywhere.

Re:The language nazi is over reacting

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, confuse more than amuse, but also "amaze,..., stun" which is the way I read it. (remember to cite your sources) http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/bemuse

That's the only valid reason.

[Kadin2048]

This is really the only good reason for the "notability" standards, IMO. It doesn't 'hurt' WP to have articles on obscure subjects, except insofar as they become impossible to verify once you get below a certain 'critical mass' where you can reasonably expect to find people who are going to know something about the subject.

Part of the benefit of Wikipedia is that it has articles on a wide variety of things, far more than a paper encyclopedia ever could. If I wanted to read Encyclopedia Britannica, I'd just go and read it. One of the reasons I search WP is because it has far more content, on a wider variety of things, than a traditional encyclopedia would.

The only reason to eliminate articles is when they're such small niche topics, that they necessarily represent the views of only a small number of people.

A fun protest example

[The Empiricist]

One of the more entertaining protests against a set of deletions (for the topics Operation CWAL and Byeard Maggott) was an episode of The Maggott Show that criticized Wikipedia's deletion policies and the application of those policies by one of its editors. Byeard Maggott, the creator of the series, told the Wikipedia editor about the episode, starting an entertaining dialogue, during which the editor pointed out that he is called much worse things than jackass "on a regular basis by those who dislike [his] opinions on road safety issues.

here's what their policy really is

[rjnagle]

I have a beef with their vanity page/notability policies. If they were more candid, they would make this their policy:

We at Wikipedia honestly have no idea which people deserve a wiki page and which do not. We have no criteria about how to judge which poets, programmers, bloggers, painters, philosophers, singers, musicians, sculptors or choreographers will be worth remembering 100 years from now. For that reason, any profile of you without a link to any corporate product will automatically be deleted. However, if you have participated in a gangbang on camera, been a short-lived Internet phenomena, been accused of a heinous crime, or had your dog poop on a subway, heck, that's good enough for us! Join the club!

Spam

[ms1234]

When do we start to see spam in Wikipedia? I guess that will be the final blow for "everyone-can-edit-it".

Re:Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

If the mass addition of irrelevant external links to multiple articles counts as spam, Wikipedia has had it for years. It's a recognized issue, and there are measures in place to try to prevent it (such as a blacklist, which prevents certain URLs from being added to pages).

Re:Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Already in there. Check out the "See Also" links - full of spam MFA sites

Re:Spam

[lazycam]

Knock on wood... Don't say that. You'll just encourage someone to do it. I'd prefer not to read about Viagra and penny stocks when I'm trying to look up a bio on Linus.

When has having time on your hands become a sin?

[Diomidis Spinellis]

The original article sneeringly states:

It's also safe to assume these are people with a lot of time on their hands.

It looks like the Washington Post's columnist thinks that having free time on your hands that you can dispense as you please, perhaps even helping volunteer efforts like Wikipedia, is the beginning of a slippery slope. I guess he's worrying will come next. Free thought?

Look Whos Talking

[flyneye]

C'mon, this is the Washington Post.Who really cares what the National Enquirer for Liberals has to say.Drive-by Media takes a swipe at Wikipedia.Wikipedia has a much larger readership than they.Unprofessional jealousy.This shouldn't even be news on /. which also probably has a larger readership.A barrage of editorials from us should put them back in a realistic perspective.Some sillyass reporter had to fill some space and Bigfoot isn't news anymore.

Copies of answers.com and howstuffworks.com

[heroine]

They do a good job of reformatting answers.com and howstuffworks.com. It shows how reformatting other text from answers.com and howstuffworks.com is now more valuable than writing original text.

Re:Copies of answers.com and howstuffworks.com

[WilliamSChips]

...answers.com copies Wikipedia, something it is legally allowed to do under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs to study a few idea

[llywrch]

You're missing the point of notability. Obscure subjects can be notable, for the simple reason that "notability" on Wikipedia is a shorthand for whether it's believable that someone would actually want to read an article on the subject in question. All species of life are considered notable, for example, as are items in a few other areas.

The concept of "notability" was created because Wikipedia is constantly bombarded with new articles about someone's significant other, garage bands who have yet to relase an album, businesses looking for free advertising, and crackpot theories. Some people think that having an article on Wikipedia is a passport to fame & credibility. What we try to do on Wikipedia is report what other people believe is notable. And most -- I'll freely admit, not all, we do make mistakes -- of the articles that fail the notability guidelines are obviously of no interest except to a very few people -- if anyone beyond it's original author.

We are not an arbitor of importance: we're just trying to write an encyclopedia about topics people want to read, not include every last possible scrap of information conceivable. Unfortunately, with Wikipedia's high Alexa rating, too many people think that an Wikipedia leads to fame.

Geoff

notability != verifiability

[Anonymous Coward]

With notability comes verifiability.

But there is already a verifiability criterion that Wikipedia articles must satisfy to be included, so why would you need a notability criterion on top of that?

Wikipedia Becomming Elistist

[Tablizer]

In their effort to better mirror "published" references, wikipedia staff has of late been acting very elitist. They will remove material that is not cited in published sources. That is very anti-web. Publishing is old-school. Authors of newer information are not even bother to publish anymore because it is easier to stick it on the web (perhaps with ads to make a buck).

If they want to give special status or marks to citations of published material, that is fine with me. However, deletion of non-published material is going overboard. Status: okay. Deletion: Not.

Time for a wikipedia revolt.

Re:Wikipedia Becomming Elistist

[Anonymous Coward]

Tough. It's not really yours to take over, much as they may give that impression, and the Wikipedians who decide those things are going to be a lot more stubborn than you are (hint - who has the servers?). They've set the official policy, and citations are required.

Re:Wikipedia Becomming Elistist

[Scorchmon]

They've actually been going after articles that are about subjects in published material. Wikipedia guidelines state that something is notable if it's been included in published material, but that doesn't matter when you have: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:IAR They can delete whatever they want.

Re:Wikipedia Becomming Elistist

[Anonymous Coward]

Bet that ups the quality, though. The great thing about the web is that it is easy to publish. That's also one of the worst things about the web.

Also, what is published? Dead tree? Online journal? There are degrees to this. I don't know what their exact policy is, just food for thought.

Too heavy handed

[dyftm]

I wrote an article about a useful program, blogged on Lifehacker amongst other blogs (presumably then, lifehacker is considered notable), however apparently blogs aren't sufficient for establishing notability. Nor are high numbers of downloads. It seems like on one hand, they are encouraging participation by anyone, and on the other hand putting the same things down saying that it has to be reported by traditional media to make it notable.

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs to study a few idea

[anaesthetica]

First among them, The Long Tail, and why it would benefit the site to take advantage of it rather than ignore it.

Believe me, Wikipedia understands the long tail. They have over 1.5 million articles in the English language encyclopedia alone, dramatically outpacing every other available encyclopedia. They built their entire model on the long tail.

However, in an effort to be a reliable source of information they have standards like "verifiability". Some topics are too obscure to be able to be independently verified and cited. If a source cannot be verified and cited by secondary sources then it's not notable enough to be included. Promotional information, articles written by their own authors, or articles about obscure or local phenomena that don't have any news/history book/other coverage are simply not something that can be included.

Wikipedia critics miss the point, or do they?

[gondwannabe]

Academics who sniff at Wik's uncredentialed content certainly don't get it. But the loudest Wik snipers are undoubtedly scared to death of the incredible magnet that the site has become.

Don't put Wik into the encyclopedia box. It's really a social knowledge network where opinion is just as entertaining as fact. It's engaging and addictive, especially around controversial topics. I think I spend more time on the Discussion pages than on the main pages. I enjoy (like many, I suspect) anonymously correcting little spelling, usage and grammar errors in Wik, just for the pleasure of it. I may never author an entry, but I'm Wikipedian, too.

Another key element of Wikipedia is its utility as a portal. I want to investigate a topic - click - there it is, ragged or elegant, but replete with interesting debate, useful links to current, socially vetted sources, etc. It is rich because it is messy. Messiness is info-liberation.

Wikipedia is probably more a threat to Yahoo and even Google than anyone else. I wouldn't mind if Wik was commercialised. This may be more productive than trying to police commercial messages and links out of Wik content.

Re:Wikipedia critics miss the point, or do they?

[fotbr]

Don't put Wik into the encyclopedia box.

The Wikipedia project tried VERY HARD to put ITSELF into that box, beginning with its very name and slogans. Don't get pissy now that people see it in that box, and have certain expectations as a result.

"Main Page - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"
"Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."

And from the about page:
"This Web site is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia..."

It may be all those things you mention IN ADDITION to an encyclopedia, but an encyclopedia is CLEARLY what they are trying to be.

Re:Wikipedia critics miss the point, or do they?

[FooAtWFU]

A gripe.

You called Wikipedia 'wik'. Wik is actually the name of a user on Wikipedia... a banned user, as a matter of fact. (And somewhat controversial in his day.) But even more than that, even when people call it 'Wiki', it's roughly analogous to calling The New York Times 'Newspaper': "Oh, hey, did you see that cool article in Newspaper the other day?" Wiki is a variety of software. There were wikis before Wikipedia.

Appropriate terms for Wikipedia include Wikipedia (but please not WikiPedia - or do you say SlashDot, MicroSoft, ComPuter, and such?), something like "the 'pedia", or possibly "the wiki" (in contexts where it is clear Wikipedia is the one in question - of course, there are thousands of other wikis). And if you're REALLY stressed for typing speed, how about calling it 'WP'?

-- grumbling for the day is done.

Re:Wikipedia critics miss the point, or do they?

[Merusdraconis]

You're assuming that everyone who criticises Wikipedia hasn't had much to do with it. This isn't exactly the case.

There's communities that have had articles deleted for 'notability' reasons when they've been notable to the community, while articles on similar subjects have stayed intact. They start to wonder that if it happens to them, how many other subjects does it happen to? Is notability defined by how much that one editor cares about a subject?

There are people who have seen Wikipedia arguments spill out into their little corners of the Internet, and people who have read Lore's excellent sendup of Wikipedia, and others who have had edits reverted for no apparent reason other than the editor in question didn't like it, leaving a big blank space in the article that your paragraph used to fill.

There are people who have found that 'consensus' comes not from two factions settling their differences and finding common ground, but when one faction gives up and lets the other faction put their 'truth' on the page. There are those that have watched featured articles degrade in quality until they stop being worthy of feature status as all the truth leaks out.

There's plenty of criticisms of Wikipedia that only become apparent when you've had something to do with Wikipedia. A lot of them, though, wouldn't have been so bad if Wikipedia wasn't striving to be accurate. If it was called "WikiTrivia: The Internet's largest resource of interesting information" then it would have been a rousing success and probably would have served the same purpose it does now, without people being so concerned about Wikipedia being correct.

Re:Wikipedia critics miss the point, or do they?

[wik]

Please don't take my name in vain.

Thanks.

Re:Wikipedia critics miss the point, or do they?

[Bloke down the pub]

You were doing so well, but sadly you didn't mention "2.0" or anything copnnected with semantics. I'd give it 7 out of 10.

Re:Wikipedia critics miss the point, or do they?

[Raenex]

Wikipedia is probably more a threat to Yahoo and even Google than anyone else.

There's an internet outside of Wikipedia. I use Google all the time to search it. I never start my search at Wikipedia, though I may throw in wiki as a keyword to get there. Wikipedia is not a threat to Google or even the Washington Post (do you go to Wikipedia for news?)

I wouldn't mind if Wik was commercialised.

That would really suck. It's nice that it is run by volunteers not bent on making a profit. I don't want advertisements when I read the site.

Re:Wikipedia critics miss the point, or do they?

[Raenex]

There's plenty of criticisms of Wikipedia that only become apparent when you've had something to do with Wikipedia. A lot of them, though, wouldn't have been so bad if Wikipedia wasn't striving to be accurate.

Wikipedia is good because they try to maintain standards. It would not be the same success it is now without it.

Of course there will always be controversy over whether some article should have been deleted. However, on the whole, the site functions extremely well. I'd say the vast majority of articles being deleted are really by a self-interested party trying to advertise themselves for whatever reason.

And if your little page gets deleted? Host your own! If you feel like you need to be officially endorsed by Wikipedia, there's a good chance you shouldn't be.

I'm not notable and they refuse to delete me

[Everyman]

For 14 months I've tried to get my bio taken down because I'm not notable. They just laugh at me, and by now there are six long "Talk" pages associated with my bio that are full of insults. It all gets indexed in Google. I'm so non-notable that they cannot find a picture of me anywhere on the web. It doesn't make any difference. When the teen-age admins on Wikipedia decide that someone needs to be punished for challenging their right to be anonymously obnoxious and invade my privacy, nothing stands in their way. There are 142,766 biographies of living people in the English edition of Wikipedia, and I promose you that this figure includes a lot of people who would rather not have to watch their biographies get vandalized for the rest of their lives. http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/

Re:I'm not notable and they refuse to delete me

[Stick_Fig]

That's because you're an extremist idiot and you are notable as a result. Just sayin'.

Fair use images

[Stick_Fig]

Wikipedia is falling under the bureaucratic knife here. Currently there is a major campaign being put on from a handful of editors to remove fair use images -- that is, free to use but copyrighted -- in favor of copyright-free images. They've removed something like 30,000 fair use images from biographical articles and have been replacing them with lower-quality photos. In one case, they tried to use a really atrocious cell phone photo instead of a promotional shot. Jimbo Wales for some reason supports this insanity.

Bureaucracy is slowly turning Wikipedia into a not-very-fun place. Editors are ruining great articles by being too overzealous. The notability thing is just one example.

Re:Fair use images

[tepples]

Currently there is a major campaign being put on from a handful of editors to remove fair use images -- that is, free to use but copyrighted -- in favor of copyright-free images.

Are these "fair use" images free to modify and to distribute commercially in paper copies of some subset of Wikipedia, or in electronic copies of some subset of Wikipedia distributed with an operating system such as Mandriva?

Re:Fair use images

[Stick_Fig]

No they're not most likely, but they work great for their legal primary usage. Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian and more like how people actually primarily use it.

Info Junkies

[Doc Ruby]

Worthless junk? That's what Slashdot and the Uncyclopedia are for.

As I noted...

[petrus4]

...on a talk page there recently, Wikipedia is run by a legion of genuinely soulless pedants. It's also entirely safe to assume, as the Post says in TFA, that such people are completely devoid of lives. Wikipedians are the type of people who, when they do manage to find employment, it's invariably in such glorious fields as tax collection or accounting.

Link to Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_(food)

Re:When has having time on your hands become a sin

[Anonymous Coward]

What he really means is that he has no time left, because he used it all up as his employer's whore. He also probably feels threatened; he relies on the semi-centralized distribution of information for his salary, and things like Wikipedia are signs that his job (as it exists now) will probably not exist indefinitely.

Perfect example of why Slashdot modding is useless

[Savior_on_a_Stick]

The following, while a bit course, made a valid point and was modded flamebait:

"Shit Casserole
(Score:0, Flamebait)
by Brandybuck (704397) Alter Relationship on Sunday December 03, @12:12PM (#17091934)
(http://www.usermode.org/ | Last Journal: Monday May 22, @08:53PM)
These are people doing a truly thankless job... and they deserve a few thank-yous

Like a shit casserole, the thanklessness of the job is irrelevant. The good intentions of a chef cannot overcome the poor choice of ingredients. In the case of Wikipedia, the poor choice was in an anarchic methodology that assumes a consensus of anonymity can product accuracy."

<b>This post, which was devoid of content, was modded "Insightful"</b>

" * Re:Shit Casserole by 0123456 (Score:1) Sunday December 03, @12:17PM
        *
            Re:Shit Casserole
            (Score:4, Insightful)
            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03, @12:18PM (#17091992)

                    an anarchic methodology that assumes a consensus of anonymity can product accuracy.

            That's hardly an inaccurate assumption. For example if myself and other AC's came to a consensus that you are a asshole, I'm sure that would be accurate."

<b>This is why I never use my mod points. It's like teaching a pig to sing.</b>

Quite honestly, the rules seem a little arbitrary

[91degrees]

I mean I'm not totally sure whether Jimmy Wales really qualifies under the guidelines, but I guess his name has been mentioned in a fe other journals. And while there have been a number of editors of fairly successful print magazines who aren't listed, irregular webcomic creator David Morgan-Mar seems to get a mention because he publishes a webcomic and a few silly computer programs. Okay, I like the comic, but does he really pass the eligibility guidelines?

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs to study a few idea

[Constantine Evans]

Notability (WP:N on Wikipedia) isn't actually a policy, or even a core concept, on Wikipedia, though it tends to be incorrectly presented as such. It is actually a guideline which serves as a more practical explanation of policy. Unfortunately, many people, even on Wikipedia, seem to think that it is a policy, and due to the way the deletion of articles works, it is often used incorrectly to justify deletion. Policy at Wikipedia is a horrible mess, with a multitude of serious contradictions, and large discrepancies between written policy and practised policy.

The actual policy is verifiability (WP:V). The reason for the policy is that topics need to have reputable sources that others can check, or it would be impossible to tell whether the content of the pages were accurate. In practice, this most often leads to long arguments over whether various sources are "reputable", or "reliable". Wikipedia has no way of deciding these arguments, so they generally go on until one side gets tired or banned for other reasons, or until the article in question is deleted, in which case the article is usually created again a year or so later and the whole process starts all over again.

Re:Wikipedia Becomming Elitist

[Tablizer]

Tough. It's not really yours to take over, much as they may give that impression, and the Wikipedians who decide those things are going to be a lot more stubborn than you are (hint - who has the servers?). They've set the official policy, and citations are required.

That is why we need a revolt. Perhaps an alternative. The Unofficiapedia or Nonstuffypedia.

Perhaps because

[/dev/trash]

there is no such thing as fair use, when it comes to the way Wikipedia uses the photos.

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs to study a few idea

[h2g2bob]

I wish I had mod points.

Wikipedia is Not Useful

[Anonymous Coward]

a) Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia
b) Wikipedia only keeps articles written like an encyclopedia
c) Wikipedia only keeps articles that can be verified outside the internet, thereby deleting a lot of 'cruft' that made wikipedia useful in the first place.

There are some obvious editors with vendettas against certain kinds of content, in particular comics and webcomics, where a lot of webcomics were deleted for 'not notable' simply because they shared a host with another webcomic (or comicgenesis, or drunkduck, or webcomicnation). So largely, they cut out entire sections of content built by communities, which then alientates the community from wikipedia, and any further content they may contribute to wikipedia as a whole.

Wikipedia's value and usefullness keeps going down because they delete the stuff that I would use wikipedia to find, and instead have to resport to sifting through google results.

One of the most laughable tests for notability is using google to search for the keyword and then telling it to ignore all forums and blogs. Okay, so they only want stuff that nobody talks about and can be found in a dead tree encyclopedia? Why use wikipedia at all then?

One day someone is going to AFD the wrong persons content, and that person will be a very powerful person in some company that will sue wikipedia out of existance due to legal costs. That is the reason why stuff should not be purged from wikipedia for mere "notability"

Wikipedia has a reverse slashdot effect, when ever something is nominated for deletion, someone tells the person who wrote the article and that results in a bunch of people trying to save the article, but the article gets deleted anyway due to "this is not a vote"... okay then what the hell is the point in having a AFD discussion, why not delete the entire wikipedia?

I don't use wikipedia except as a last resort, the content

Re:Perfect example of why Slashdot modding is usel

[Anonymous Coward]

It seem you haven't mastered the Preview button; moderation may be a little beyond you.

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs to study a few idea

[saforrest]

First among them, The Long Tail, and why it would benefit the site to take advantage of it rather than ignore it.

The whole "notability" criteria seems very much like 1980s thinking. So many lessons of the internet being ignored there.

And your whole "leapfrogging onto the latest buzzword bandwagon" is, like, so late-90s.

Speaking somewhat less childishly, the "long tail" notion is already inherent in the conceptions of what constitutes a good Wikipedia article in Wiki Is Not Paper.

But as the other person who replied to you indicated, there is a point where the tail for a topic is so long that contributed information is completely unverifiable. Unverifiable means, in any case, outright false. In many cases, these are vanity articles, hidden advertising, or simply utterly random garbage.

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs to study a few idea

[saforrest]

Speaking somewhat less childishly, the "long tail" notion is already inherent in the conceptions of what constitutes a good Wikipedia article in Wiki Is Not Paper.

Sorry, that link was broken. Here's one that works: Wiki is not paper.

Is it worth maintaining?

[Goonie]

Furthermore, it's a quality issue. Wikipedians want to make sure that the articles on Wikipedia are fair, accurate, and supported by sources. If an article is on a complete nonentity it's likely to be impossible to do so. Even if it can be checked, if it's on a trivial topic, it's simply not worth the effort.

notable bias

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I've found is that more than a few articles of interest to me were present to read, then upon attempting to add an edit, the article has been pulled for "not being notable". My family surname is an example. Certainly that may not be something of interest to the vast majority of Wikipedians. However, to those few who share that name, the information may be invaluable. Instead what they'll get is, alot of wasted effort amounting to, it's only notable if *we the overlords* say it is. Bull pucky! Who monitors the monitors? This quality control seems to me like nothing but a veiled censorship campaign. Perhaps Wikipedia China is in the process of expanding...

We must keep the Wiki pure!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with many who have commented about the need to keep the site pure. No need to add information that would be useful to groups less than 5 million. Product information, regional information and the odd factoids are unimportant. We are not concerned with accuracy as much as to being just like the bound versions for sale; being as clean and pure. The fact that I haven't visited Wikipedia since the purging of the odds and ends has nothing to do with the changes. Our goal is being exactly like a regular encyclopedia, but different. And I'll be back again next when I have to write another high school paper on photosynthesis.

rank or review, but don't prune!

[reversible physicist]

I agree that "pruning cruft" based solely on whether the article is important is a terrible idea. If they want to rank articles in some manner so that you can filter out what you don't want to see, that's fine. But Wikipedia is the perfect place for all sorts of information that matters to specialized communities. The function that is needed is review not pruning.

I helped write an article in Wikipedia about the software program DVArchive, which is widely used in the ReplayTV community. It was a short article but it was useful for the intended audience, and several other people also edited the article and added references. The article came up as one of the top two or three google hits for "DVArchive", out of 60,000. Then the article suddenly disappeared because DVArchive wasn't notable enough.

This seems like a bad process. Articles should be judged on whether they are useful, well written, correct, etc., but they should not dissapear simply because someone doesn't think they are important enough. I would favor something more like the slashdot moderation/ranking system, where you set some thresholds (e.g., recency, maturity, notability, etc.) and articles that fall below the thresholds are hidden.

Notably problematic

[RomulusNR]

"Notability" is the number one scourge on Wikipedia's goal of being a compendium of human knowledge (followed by source elitism). You can't claim to catalog human knowledge if you place value judgements on that knowledge based on its popularity. And quite often, editors yell "not notable" about articles that are in fact quite notable, just not in the Americentric or otherwise regionalistic circles those editors run in. Ignorance is not non-notability, but ignorace doesn't know that.

Re:The question is, why is this noteable to the WP

[DerekLyons]

What Wikipedia editors determined wasn't worthy of an entry, Washington Post editors deemed worthy of an article. Much like in the accuracy comparison with Encyclopedia Brittanica, Wikipedia has once again demonstrated that they are the ones practicing higher standards.

That would be true - in some world where the deletion or retention of a Wikipedia article is based on rational and objective grounds. The reality is that the process is as much a lottery as anything else - and the game is rigged to serve up the winning numbers to 'well known' editors and contributors willing to outstubborn everyone else.

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs to study a few idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You MIGHT have a point, if all of your concerns weren't already covered by Wikipedia's policy of verifiability.

But nay, you just like being an arbiter of importance, but don't want to admit it.

'Fess up. You LIKE being a pompous ass.

Where's the edit link for Washington Post?

[I am Jack's username]

Also:

its pages, which every registered user can alter,

This is technically correct but implies that you have to be registered to edit, which is incorrect.

Some Standards Needed.

[pingveno]

Obscure is okay, but some articles are inappropriate. A few days ago I participated in getting an article for a non-notable manga deleted. The article author was the fifteen year old that had gotten his own manga publish, apparently for a local library. I felt sorry for the kid, but the article wasn't appropriate. Reasonable standards must be upheld.

irc.mediawiki.org

[pingveno]

Too late! Spam and vandalism happen every few seconds on Wikipedia. Edits stream to a IRC channel on irc.mediawiki.org. Editors examine the changes and almost always succeed in removing spam and vandalism, often within seconds. Spammers and vandals beware!

add to the roar!

[crhylove]

I just wanted to add to the roar of people saying that some things not notable to one person MAY be notable to SOMEBODY. Now if they are running out of room on their servers or something.... Well then let's renegotiate, otherwise, why not just leave EVERYTHING in? I can only see many upsides and relatively no downsides. If something was mentioned in wikipedia even once, for selfish reasons or otherwise, it still might be valuable information to SOMEBODY, and if somebody else ends up passionate about it and alters it in a way more in line with their version of reality, well, don't we have a process set up for that already? Great! Let them duke it out in the discussion area for all to see publicly.

Wikipedia is a great design, and a great functional resource. It's going to be even greater over time, and I think the eventual elimination of "notability" etc., will be part of that process.

rhY

You failed to mention which ... what a shock.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just love how so often when people claim that Wikipedia deleted something important they leave out the minor detail of what was deleted.

Search engine test

[Per Abrahamsen]

The search engine test is under this section:

Other tests for inclusion that have been proposed (but haven't necessarily received consensus support) include:

Also, none of the tests are really meant as a replacement for sound judgment, they are tools to be used in a discussion amongst the editors.

Slashdot subculture

[Bloke down the pub]

wikipedia is a tertiary source, and therefore has to be based on previously-published sources. There aren't any published guides to slashdot culture to base an article on

I know I'll get modded down for saying this, but here goes: Goatse links. Imagine a beowulf cluster of karma whores. Today, even the trolls are dupes. In Soviet Russia, only old Koreans welcome overlords who pour hot grits down Natalie Portman's naked pants!!!!

So, there is now.

Re:Sounds like Wikipedia needs to study a few idea

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what your mom said last night.

Notability correlates with verifiability

[tepples]

So why then do you need the notability criterion in addition to the verifiability?

Because notability correlates especially well with verifiability. Notability is not a Wikipedia policy but a guideline as to whether it is feasible to write a verifiable article about a given subject.

Re:Notability correlates with verifiability

[Jott42]

Correlation does not imply causation.

Re:Notability correlates with verifiability

[tepples]

Correlation does not imply causation.

However, there is a causation here. The non-notability of a subject causes fewer reliable secondary sources to spend resources reporting on the subject, which in turn causes verifying any claims about the subject to become more difficult. In addition, strong correlation tends to empirically imply that two effects have a common cause strongly enough for one to feel justified in taking action, especially where causation would be difficult to prove at a given time.

Then move it to a CruftWiki

[tepples]

Wikipedia only keeps articles that can be verified outside the internet, thereby deleting a lot of 'cruft' that made wikipedia useful in the first place.

Wikia.com and other sites host dozens of other wikis specifically for cruft. Put your Star Wars/Trek cruft on Wookieepedia/Memory Alpha. Put your Tetris cruft on Tetriswiki.

meta:Foundation issues

[tepples]

Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian

Wikimedia Foundation disagrees with you, and some aspects of what the Foundation approves on the servers and bandwidth that it pays for are not up for debate. Feel free to start your own fork (a la Wikinfo) if you and your counsel believe that you can make fair use images work.

Re:meta:Foundation issues

[Stick_Fig]

Those guiding principles need wiggle room or they won't be successful long-term. Ubuntu is a much better model to follow. Since you saw through my point the last time I posted it, here it is a few more times: Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian. Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian. Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian. Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian. Wikipedia needs to be less like Debian. If the Wikimedia Foundation disagrees, then they shouldn't expect long-term success out of the project.

Re:meta:Foundation issues

[tepples]

Those guiding principles need wiggle room or they won't be successful long-term. Ubuntu is a much better model to follow.

Can you write an article to back this up, with citations, and post it to Meta? If they reject it, then why not start your own fork with the wiggle room you demand and see how many contributors you can attract?

Since you saw through my point the last time I posted it, here it is a few more times:

This argumentum ad nauseam may have convinced some Slashdot readers, but good luck convincing the Foundation.

Truth!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you. I'm not sure where the line should be drawn with regard to 'notability.' I think that an everything-wiki is definitely an invaluable cause, though. Should that be wikipedia? Maybe, maybe not. It should exist though.

Wikipedia needs to decide for keeps what it's there for, and if it's to be a traditional encyclopedia it needs to do away with a lot of the un-notable things still there. Otherwise it needs to allow everything in. It's a design decision on the scale of going monolithic or micro, but it's one they haven't justified.